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ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 



By Rev, A. J, Gordon, D.D, 

The Ministry of the Spirit* Introduction by Rev. 

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II 



Fleming H* Rcvell Company 



New York: 112 Fifth Ave. 
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Toronto : 140 & 142 Yonge St. 





6 



V 



^/ &^ 



ADONJRAM JUDSON 
"GORDON 



3H 2&ogra}if)p 



WITH LETTERS AND ILLUSTRATIVE EXTRACTS 
DRAWN FROM UNPUBLISHED OR UNCOL- 
LECTED SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 



BY HIS SQN 

ERNEST B/ GORDON 




V*\* 



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FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
New York Chicago Toronto 

Publishers of Evangelical Literature 









Copyright, 1896, by 
Fleming H. Revell Company. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

CHAP. I. A Study in Origins 1 1 

New England, past and present— Dr. Gordon's ancestry— Early- 
days — Conversion — School life in New London 

CHAP. II. Schools and Schoolmasters 23 

At Brown University — Conditions of college life in i860 — In- 
cidents 

CHAP. III. The Young Minister 34 

Seminary life at Newton — Influence of Dr. Hackett — Pastor of 
the Jamaica Plain Church — Letters— Called to Clarendon Street 
— Criticism of Robertson on baptism— The Church Unity Society 
examined 

CHAP. IV. A Stony Field 60 

Difficulties of the Boston field— The periodic season of unbelief— 
Unitarian-transcendentalism — Sluggish religious life of the 
Clarendon Street Church 

CHAP. V. For Spiritual Worship 73 

The true aim of a church — Congregational singing — " The Ser- 
vice of Song" — Extracts from sermons on the worship of the 
church — The consummation of this reform 

CHAP. VI. Where the Roots Fed 82 

"In Christ" published — Private conferences for Bible study 
— Books which had a formative influence on Dr. Gordon's min- 



6 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

istry — Contact with Brethrenism — The mission of this sect — In 
Europe, 1877— Estimate of preachers heard abroad 

CHAP. VII. The Tide Turns 94 

At work with Uncle John Vassar— The Moody meetings of '77— 
Incidents of the " inquiry room"— " A question of casuistry"— 
The redeemed men— Communion reform 

CHAP. VIII. Reform for Individual and State 106 

The Boston Industrial Temporary Home — An answer to prayer 
—Wendell Phillips and the drunkard— Crossett of North China- 
Advocacy of prohibition — Cooperation with Joseph Cook in re- 
form work— The Prohibition party— Woman's cause 

CHAP. IX. On the Highways 117 

Arrested for preaching on Boston Common— The New England 
Evangelization Society— How to reach the unchurched— Address 
at Plymouth, " Forefathers' Day" 

CHAP. X. The " Watchword " 128 

The establishment of the " Watchword"— Its aim, scope, and 
history 

CHAP. XI. Truth and Counterfeit 133 

Christian Science — Its genesis and doctrine — Dr. Gordon's in- 
dictment of it — Healing by faith — Remarkable answers to prayer 
in Dr. Gordon's experience 



CHAP. XII. Among Students 149 

The Princeton College meetings— Difficulties met and overcome 
—Contact with President McCosh— Work at other colleges 



49 



CHAP. XIII. Missions or Mammon ? 158 

The Congo Mission bequeathed to the A. B. M. U.— Dr. Gor- 
don's fight against its abandonment — ' ' The cooking-stove apos- 
tasy "—Address at Evangelical Alliance, "The Responsibility 
Growing out of our Perils and Opportunities " 



CONTENTS 7 

PAGE 

CHAP. XIV. " Seasonably out of Season " 173 

Northfield and its conferences — Dr. Gordon's spiritual experi- 
ences — Work at Seabright — Summer ministries in New Hamp- 
shire and on the Atlantic 

CHAP. XV. A Character Sketch 185 

Personal appearance — Traits and characteristics— Work among 
poor— Home life 

CHAP. XVI. Intermezzo 203 

Dr. Gordon's humor — Negroid and other stories — Quaint ex- 
periences — Pastoral incidents 

CHAP. XVII. " Christ for the World " 222 

The significance of the modern missionary movement — Misap- 
prehensions concerning it — Dr. Gordon's work for this cause — 
The International Conference of Missions in London— The 
Scotch campaign — Chairman of the Executive Committee, 
A. B. M. U. — Personal relations with missionaries 

CHAP. XVIII. On the Conduct of Missions 235 

Missionary administration — On "witnessing" as the church's 
chief function — Education vs. Evangelization — Government 
grants to mission schools— Philadelphia address on " Decen- 
tralization " 

CHAP. XIX. As Making Many Rich 251 

The faith element in missions — The Clarendon Street Church as 
a missionary church — Its training in giving 

CHAP. XX. Drilling the Recruits 260 

Establishment of the Boston Missionary Training-school — Ad- 
ministration on faith principles— The assault on the school — 
Dr. Gordon's reply— " Short-cut methods " 

vy CHAP. XXI. The Preacher and the Pulpit 275 

Dr. Gordon as a preacher — His view of what the pulpit should 
be— Power in illustration— Examples 



8 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAP. XXII. Errant Man and the Inerrant Book 298 

Dr. Gordon's theology— The Bible and inspiration— Estimate of 
human nature 

CHAP. XXIII. Evolution, or the Appearing? 310 

"Progress" — Review of Drummond's "A City without a 
Church"— The coming of Christ— Eschatology— The Roman 
Antichrist— The restoration of Israel— The resurrection 

CHAP. XXIV. In Labors Abundant 330 

Address before the Evangelical Alliance, 1890— Church unity- 
Personal experience of faith healing— Work in Chicago, 1890 
and 1893— The World's Fair campaign — Rabinowitz 

CHAP. XXV. For the Healing of the Nations 340 

Work among the Jews— The Chinese mission at Clarendon 
Street— Incidents— The transition to a spiritual church life 

CHAP. XXVI. A Sower Went forth to Sow 355 

Convention work in American cities — The convention of pre- 
millennial Baptists in Brooklyn— Dr. Gordon's address— Teach- 
ing on the Holy Spirit 

CHAP. XXVII. Till the Day Dawn 367 

Twenty-fifth anniversary of pastorate— Closing days— Sickness 
and death — The cries of bereavement— Funeral addresses 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



A. J. Gordon Frontispiece 

Gordon as a Young Man Facing page 40 

x Dana Meeting-house, Exterior ) 

' " 180 

" Interior ) 

Clarendon Street Church 350 

Last Resting-place Page 386 



But thou wouldst not alone 
Be saved, my father, alone 
Conquer and come to thy goal, 
Leaving the rest in the wild. 
We were weary, and we 
Fearful, and we in our march 
Fain to drop down and to die. 
Still thou turnedst, and still 
Gavest the weary thy hand. 
If, in the paths of the world, 
Stones may have wounded thy feet, 
Toil or dejection have tried 
Thy spirit, of that we saw 
Nothing : to us thou wast still 
Cheerful and helpful and firm. 
Therefore to thee it was given 
Many to save with thyself, 
O faithful shepherd, to come 
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. 

M. Arnold, Rugby Chapel. 






CHAPTER I 

A STUDY IN ORIGINS 

New England, past and present — Dr. Gordon's ancestry — Early days — 
Conversion — School life in New London 

THE central portion of New Hampshire is a land of far 
distances and blue outlines, of winding roads, upland 
pastures, and sun-crowned hills. Dozens of lakes, small and 
great, stretch their bared breasts to the July sun. Great tracts 
of maple and birch blaze with a fire of scarlet, of orange, of 
crimson, of yellow, in the shortening afternoons of October. 
Threading its way like a stream of quicksilver from the high- 
lands in the north through the smiling hill-country, the Pemige- 
wasset carries seaward the contributions of unnumbered 
mountain brooks. It is a land of idyllic beauty, with a charm 
of its own, half indefinable — perhaps the result of the endlessly 
new combinations of the simple elements of its landscape, 
which no one who rides over its rough roads can fail to make. 
A quiet country withal, quite unlike the rest of our great, 
busy, commercial land. Life here is to the fevered and strenu- 
ous life of the cities below as the peaceful mountain pool is to 
the mill-race which drives ten thousand spindles. For great 
changes indeed have come over the face of the land in the 
course of a third of a century. Those subtle but omnipotent 
economic forces which, apparently from sheer arbitrariness, de- 
stroy the patiently constructed foundations of generations of 
industry, while rearing with superhuman energy new creations 
elsewhere, have made themselves felt here. New England 

ii 



12 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

farm life has gone down before the inordinate competition of 
the great West. Farms have become pasture, pasture has 
grown into wilderness, homesteads have disappeared. Those 
monuments of untiring energy, the endless stone walls, are 
themselves tumbling apart. Back roads are closed; the 
strange faces of Canadian habitants are more and more com- 
mon. The old order is passing away. The most encouraging 
indications of a future in the general decadence are the at- 
tractive villas of Boston and New York, which are rising here 
and there in coigns of vantage wherever the outlook is unusu- 
ally striking and beautiful. 

And where are the old occupants of these farms? What has 
become of the children of these lovely hillsides? Not a city 
in the land but has representatives from their large families, 
not a State in the Union but has benefited by the reserve of 
granite energy which they have carried with them into the 
exacting life of the day. Grappling with other problems now, 
— of finance, of justice, of legislation, — they show the same 
indomitable spirit which solved the humbler though equally 
knotty problem of wringing sustenance for a dozen little ones 
from these boulder-strewn fields. Fifteen miles from the spot 
where this is written was born that imperial man with the 
mighty brow, under which glowed two coals for eyes— the 
great commoner, the expounder of the Constitution, Daniel 
Webster. Fifty-three miles away as the crow flies stands the 
little school-house on one of whose benches the name Horace 
Greeley, cut with school-boy's knife, is still to be seen. Look- 
ing off from my window, I can see on a distant hill the old 
white homestead of the Magouns, name distinguished in pul- 
pit, in counting-house, in college chair. The remembrance of 
venerable Parson Morton, with his unfailing black gloves, is 
still fresh in the minds of the old people of the adjoining town. 
His son, whom they recall as a barefoot lad, has become a 
leading banker at the metropolis, a vice-president of the 



A STUDY IN ORIGINS 13 

United States, and much else. At Hillsborough Bridge below 
was born the Nestor of American journalism, Charles A. Dana. 
Somewhat to the west is the old home of Austin Corbin, the 
wizard of speculative finance. At a distance farther south 
stands the town where John P. Hale first saw daylight. Of 
the others— the Miners, the Brewsters, the Wentworths, the 
Pillsburys, the Colbys— it is not necessary to speak. They 
have been worthy children of the New Hampshire soil— strong, 
shrewd, hard-hitting, much-enduring men, very like the Scotch, 
also bred in rugged hills under a Calvinist regime, and vitaliz- 
ing the British empire, world over, as these New Englanders 
have vitalized the great Republic. 

The thoughtful American cannot but question whether, in 
the new homes of Kansas and Dakota, where the black loam 
of river-bottoms furnishes an easy livelihood, but where there 
can be two elements only, sky and prairie, in the background 
of his mental pictures, the transplanted New Englander will 
not lose something of the idealism and poetic sensitiveness 
which have been so finely blended with the more masterful 
elements of his character. Still greater will be his misgivings 
as to the future of this people in the luxurious homes which 
they have made for themselves in every American city. Plain 
living was the necessary condition of existence on these rocky 
hillsides. High thinking was an almost equally necessary con- 
sequence of life in such lovely natural surroundings. Can the 
stock retain its noble characteristics under the new conditions? 

Concerning the more remote ancestry of the subject of this 
sketch little is known. That the blood of the saint of Leyden, 
John Robinson, coursed in his veins is fairly well authenti- 
cated. The Gordons themselves were perhaps the flotsam drift- 
ing to the American coast from the great wreck of their clan 
at Culloden. Yet wheresoever they came from, they were a 
sturdy race with " the thews of Anakim," performing great 
feats with ax and plow. The Puritan, steel before, was now 



14 AD0N1RAM JUDSON GORDON 

thrice hardened by the pioneer experiences of wilderness life. 
Pushing up from Massachusetts, he cut his roads far up the 
mountain-sides, as if in scorn of rich intervales, cleared away 
the primeval forests, built his churches and schools, and took 
his properly accredited place on the map of the world like a 
straightforward, matter-of-fact man. 

Old Levi Robinson, Dr. Gordon's great-grandfather, was a 
man of this rugged type. When hostilities with the mother- 
country became imminent, he shouldered his flint-lock, and 
tramped through wood and over stream, one hundred miles to 
Boston. Arriving too late to take part in the engagement at 
Bunker Hill, he served through the remainder of the campaign 
with Washington. A stout-hearted man who believed what 
he believed, he first in the region saw the cogency of the Bap- 
tist position, and on sight accepted it, spite of the opposition of 
standing order, spite of the odor of fanaticism popularly sup- 
posed to cling about Anabaptist notions. Some thereare even now 
in his native town who remember the old man, in his powdered 
wig and with a huge silver-topped stick, walking Sunday morn- 
ings seven miles or more to the distant church of his persuasion. 

What traditions of piety there were in this Puritan family! 
We recall especially one old grandmother, hid away on a back 
farm with but two books, the Bible and Bunyan, who tended 
and nurtured a spiritual life fairly efflorescent in its devotion, 
its sweetness, its humility. In extreme age interest in the 
Lord's work never dimmed. Often did her grandson, coming 
back to the old home in the summer-time, marvel at the depth, 
the richness, the fulness of this hidden saint life. Often did 
he wonder that, in her obscurity, she should show such an in- 
telligent perception of the truth. A prayerful life is as a corn 
of wheat in the ground — sure to bring forth fruit in the years 
to come. Who shall say how much the flower of a later 
noble and saintly career owed to this hidden, unobserved, un- 
obtrusive life, rooted and grounded in God? 



A STUDY IN ORIGINS 15 

John Calvin Gordon, the father, was a man in whose char- 
acter our own easy-going age would doubtless find much 
amusement. To the average jellyfish, convinced of the per- 
fection and completeness of the invertebrate state, a back- 
boned creature must seem little short of a freak. A man to 
whom the doctrine of God's sovereignty was even more im- 
portant than a five-per-cent. change in the newest tariff, would 
be equally curious and unaccountable nowadays. Yet this 
was such a one, cast in the mould of earlier days, whose whole 
life was bound up in the " five points " of the Genevan system, 
whom the fire-cry of "dogma" never alarmed, whose little 
property was spent in building churches and providing for the 
religious instruction of his generation. It was a period of doc- 
trinal agitation on a subject somewhat obsolete in these days 
of exegesis — a subject which, as Froude says, has ever divided 
men who tamper with it, and will to the end. The problems 
of " fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," were then 
the standards round which battles were waged. The disagree- 
ment resulting from these discussions led to division and the 
formation from the parent organization of a new body, the 
Free Baptists. 

Deacon Gordon went with the hyper-Calvinists. To him 
the very principle and foundation of things was involved. He 
often declared humorously that he could tell an Arminian 
farmer by a glance at his woodpile, so disorderly and so irregu- 
lar were the adherents of a disorderly and irregular system apt 
to be. Yet we would not give the impression that here was a 
wrangling, disputatious schoolman to whom controversy was 
the breath of the nostril and doctrinal disagreement meat and 
drink. On the contrary, few men have left behind them such 
traditions of piety and devotion. The morning exercises of 
the family were held in a corner room of the old homestead, 
close to the cross-roads, where the villagers were constantly 
passing. The recollection of Deacon Gordon's prayers, wafted 



1 6 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

out of the open windows into the June air, are still present in 
the minds of the older people, as the aroma of long-preserved 
sandalwood. Nor did insistence on tenet interfere with the 
weightier matters of practical Christianity. Rectitude, charity, 
self-denying effort for the advancement of the kingdom, won 
for the rigid Calvinist the affection of the whole region. 
Strength and sweetness were here blended as in the greatest 
of New England Calvinists, Jonathan Edwards. And the 
sweetness was as different from the sweetness of our modern 
saccharine, humanitarian theology, as the honey of Hybla is 
from the candy of the little corner store. 

And of the mother how shall we adequately speak? Genius 
for goodness, as pronounced in Dr. Gordon's character as ever 
the genius for music or mechanics in any, presupposes a good 
mother. Here was a woman like Susannah Wesley, self-effac- 
ing in her unselfishness, quaintly unconscious of her own sur- 
passing goodness, and endowed with minor excellences, dis- 
cernible daily in the son's life. Those who were present at 
her funeral will not soon forget the tribute which he paid to 
the still face wrapped in its death-sleep. How full of love, of 
gratitude, of longing reminiscence! What references to her 
laborious life, to the unrecorded sacrifices, to the solicitous 
care with which she brought up her twelve children, to the 
constant ministry among the sick and needy of her village ; for 
if there was want of watcher or nurse she was ever ready, spite 
of her large family, to spend the night away from home, ever 
back at her work in the early morning. At the risk of antici- 
pating, we cannot refrain from reproducing here a letter writ- 
ten immediately after the son, in anguish of spirit, had laid the 
mother away. It is a breath from the flood-tide of blessed 
memories which death alone awakes, revives, gathers up. He 
walks back from the grave dug in a hillside white with Febru- 
ary drifts to the old home. One hope alone can in any degree 
assuage the sorrow ; and so he takes up the New Testament, 



A STUDY IN ORIGINS 17 

and for two days reads and ponders on every passage referring 
to the resurrection. 

" I have spent two days here," so the letter goes, "much of 
the time alone in the dear home where mother spent her last 
years. So far from seeming lonely, I should be glad to spend 
days there where everything reminds us of the beloved one. 
I have many times gone into her vacant bedroom and knelt 
where she so often bowed and prayed for her children. Her 
family was her parish ; to them she ministered, and for them 
she ceased not to pray until the end. ' Father, I pray for 
those that thou hast given me, that they may be with me 
where I am, and behold my glory.' All my sorrow for her has 
been turned into unspeakable joy in view of the rest into which 
she has entered." 

It was into this home with its long heritage of Christian liv- 
ing that a son was born on the 19th of April, 1836. A new 
era was opening for American Christianity, a new impulse was 
throbbing with springtime energy in its veins. The greatest 
of modern missionaries had gone forth, in the spirit of Boni- 
face, to grapple with the forces of heathenism in their very 
stronghold. And now the story of the heroic career in Bur- 
mah had reached the homes of America. In city, in hamlet, 
in distant farm, wherever devout hearts were praying for the 
spread of Christ's kingdom, the history of hardship and suffer- 
ing and faithful testimony was being rehearsed. The tale of 
the agony of Oung-Pen-La wrung the heart of the New Hamp- 
shire villager, and in his admiration he determined to name his 
child after the apostle, Adoniram Judson. The interval of key- 
note 'twixt the name of John Calvin Gordon and that of his 
little son marks in a significant way the transition in American 
Christianity from its speculative to its practical and missionary 
phase. To the new generation Christianity was to be not so 
much a bunch of theories for debate and discussion as a uni- 
versal economy, a regime whose sway was to extend over 



1 8 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

all peoples. Few men entered more earnestly, though in a 
humble way, into the robust life of Calvinistic Christianity 
than the father. Few men have, under God, been more active 
and helpful in emphasizing the new purposes and revived mis- 
sion of the Christian church of our century than the son. 

Calvin Gordon was the owner of a woolen-mill. Nowa- 
days, in the era of capitalism, such a statement would imply 
the possession of at least considerable wealth. Not so then. 
Mills were small, and run usually by the owner himself with 
the help of his family. The type is now obsolete. The all- 
absorbing system of centralized production, with its proletariat 
work-people, its immeasurable capital, its dreary history of 
strike and lockout, has crushed the little mill as completely 
as the Dakota wheat-field has crowded out the New England 
farm. The stream which supplied power to the Gordon mill 
and to five others now runs untroubled through the alders. It 
has become the sole property of a wealthy manufacturer, who 
uses it for trout much as the patricians of old Rome used the 
lakes of Campania for carp and barbel. The plain, brave life 
of New England has vanished ; the old economy, with its rela- 
tively meager productivity, but its incomparably better distri- 
bution of wealth, is a thing of the past. The coming socialistic 
synthesis, if it be no mirage, is at best far, far distant. And, 
meantime, suffering, want, class hatred, economic chaos! 

We can easily imagine what life in such a diminutive factory 
would be. Duties were of course multifarious. To bargain 
with the farmer at the door, who came to exchange his year's 
shearing for substantial, long-wearing cloth; to follow the 
shuttle back and forth in its magical course ; to attend to any 
stoppage in the water-wheels ; to repair breaks in machinery ; 
to keep the accounts in the little closet office— doubtless the 
days were full enough. Commission-agent, machinist, ac- 
countant, mill-hand— all functions were centralized in one 
man. Work then was an education; it is now a form of 



A STUDY IN ORIGINS 19 

slavery. Then the diversity of labor developed an ingenuity 
which has made the New England name proverbial ; now the 
machine-like task, pursued ten hours daily throughout a life- 
time, of throwing a hand this way or bending the body the 
other, ends usually in mental stupefaction and moral inertia. 
Work in the fields, too, was in the spring season often substi- 
tuted for the labors of the mill. Doubtless the lad eagerly 
left his ordinary task of washing greasy wools in the big iron 
kettle — a vessel that in after-years was the treasured receptacle 
for flowers on the lawn of his summer home— for the more 
welcome labor of following the plow through the fresh-turned 
sod under the skies of May. It was in these years too, doubt- 
less, so healthfully varied, so full of opportunity for the obser- 
vant mind, that the gift of comparison and illustration from the 
common things of life was developed— a gift which made the 
discourses of later years as instinct with naturalness and vitality 
as the parables of the synoptists themselves. 

So passed the early years in a quiet village lying in the 
trough of the billowy New Hampshire hills, in a home of ex- 
ceptional piety, amid such surroundings as could hardly fail 
to nurture a wholesome, high-souled, nature-loving character. 
When the boy reached his fifteenth year a great change passed 
across his inner life. Hitherto a thoughtless, somewhat in- 
different, unresponsive lad, he now became intent on new 
things. New vistas opened out ; a new seriousness sobered 
him ; a new thoughtfulness was turning his attention to a larger 
life than that which had to do with fuller's tub and farmer's 
team. The weightier interests of the spiritual life began to ab- 
sorb his thoughts. First came the struggle, the wrestling as at 
Peniel till the gray dawn. The conviction of sin was intense, 
unendurable. A realization of the corruption of the human 
heart, a vision of the perfect God, high and lifted up— to what 
conclusion could these lead save that of unqualified un worthi- 
ness, of utter helplessness? The conflict of soul darkened and 



20 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

intensified. A whole night was finally spent in such anguish 
of spirit that the father was obliged to sit with him till day- 
break. Sorrow endureth for the night, but joy cometh in the- 
morning. Calm as the sunshine which flooded the hills the 
next day was that boy spirit which had found peace with God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

On a lovely Sabbath in June he witnessed, with his two 
sisters, a good confession, going down with them in mystic 
death into the waters of the old mill-stream, which enlarges 
itself into a bit of a lake above his home. His conversion was 
a new impulse in all directions. Books had been an aversion, 
study an almost penal discipline. With what avidity did he 
now go back to these distasteful tasks ! For did they not con- 
stitute the necessary preparation for a future, the anticipation 
and hope of which he was now treasuring in his heart? 

This hope and purpose he did not long keep to himself. 
Shortly after his sixteenth year had opened he confessed before 
the church hi i determination to enter the ministry. One who 
was present has described the scene to the writer. A warm 
evening in late spring ; the sounds of the wakeful world of the 
lower creation coming in the open doors and windows ; a shy, 
awkward boy, yet with a light on his face, announcing, with 
much difficulty and stumbling, his purpose to devote his life 
and best powers to his Saviour's work. " Judson is a good 
boy, and would make a good minister if only he had efiergy" 
remarked one old deacon to the writer's informant. Not the 
first person, forsooth, to mistake noisiness for force, and, con- 
versely, to disregard the latent power which lies hid in the 
quietest mill-pond. 

This decision made, the first step to be taken was prepara- 
tion for college. There was a fitting-school in the village, but 
its connection was with the new and lax seceding party. The 
boy was sent, therefore, by his stanchly Calvinist father to a 
trustworthy denominational school at New London, N. H. In 



A STUDY IN ORIGINS 21 

a suit of clothes made by his mother's hands from cloth spun 
in the old mill, (how reverently in after-years did he speak of 
these ministrations ! ) he started from home. A long walk truly, 
thirty-four miles, when one is baggage train as well as infantry. 
Yet doubtless the bag in which he carried his effects was not 
heavily freighted— a change of clothing, a Virgil, and an 
algebra constituting a not unsupposable inventory of its con- 
tents. The country, too, through which he trudged is peculiarly 
beautiful, past Cardigan and Ragged mountains, round the 
base of Kearsarge and by Sunapee Lake, into the plain in 
which the school town is situated. 

Of his life in New London there is very slight record. Foun- 
dations, though more essential than finials, are usually hid in the 
earth and forgotten. Up to this time there had been little pre- 
liminary instruction. The classes, therefore, were much in ad- 
vance of the new-comer. But, though the cabbage outstrips 
the oak in the first months of spring, final results are never 
uncertain. The difficulties were further complicated by that 
problem of self-support which so often meets and vexes students 
in American schools. Odd moments, the small change of lei- 
sure, were all carefully economized against the day when term- 
bills should come due. On one occasion young Gordon took 
the contract of painting the exterior of the main school build- 
ing, a structure four stories in height. The whole spring recess 
was spent in work on corner boards and cases and window- 
sashes. His room-mate, a young man with better financial 
backing, generously assisted in the task without pecuniary re- 
turn. This copartnership, begun on high ladders with paint- 
pots and brushes, was resumed in a very different sphere later 
on. The two painters became respectively executive chairman 
and corresponding secretary of the missionary society of the 
Baptist denomination in America, and shoulder to shoulder 
labored for the evangelization of the world. 

We have before us a small bundle of themes or essays in 



2 2 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

fine, copperplate handwriting, much faded now, which were 
written in these school-boy days. Among them is the text of 
an address before the literary association of the school, which 
bore the pretentiously classical name of "The Euphemian 
Society." It is full of references to the duties of the hour 
in the moral-political crisis which the slavery agitation had 
brought on. There is much attempt at bravura, and a turgid 
style which contrasts strangely with the calm, unruffled, lake- 
like lucidity of later years. On the other hand, we find in 
these years the stagings going up which were to support the 
delicate, aerial, and yet geometrically accurate exegesis which 
constituted so great a charm in Dr. Gordon's writings and ad- 
dresses. In anticipation of future needs and interests, Greek 
became immediately the subject of special study. His old 
teacher writes : 

" Greek he began with me. He liked the language, and 
pursued it with a genuine zest. He seemed to realize that it 
was the tongue specially prepared by God as the depository 
of his highest spiritual revelations. With this language he was 
specially to deal in all his future study and work. Hence, 
thoughtful and high-purposed as he was, he sought to know 
it. He studied his long and tedious lessons in the Greek 
paradigms as though in pursuit of game which he was bound 
to round up. In later years, when I have noted in his writ- 
ings specially fine and discriminating renderings of difficult 
texts in the New Testament, I have thought I could detect an 
apt and skilful use of the principles of the Greek language first 
learned in New London." 



CHAPTER II 

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 
At Brown University — Conditions of college life in i860 — Incidents 

IN the summer of '56 the last term of preparatory-school 
life closed, and in the fall of the same year Gordon was 
matriculated at Brown University. At one time he had been 
drawn to Dartmouth College, the noble and richly historic 
university of his native State; but various considerations led 
him to decide finally for the denominational school at Provi- 
dence. Not the least important of these was the prestige of 
the great president, the Arnold of America, Francis Wayland, 
who had just closed his career as an educationalist, but whose 
fame and the immediate influence of whose multifarious labors 
were still strongly felt in the Christian circles of New England. 
With consummate ability and sagacity he had anticipated the 
whole course of university reform which is fast making of 
American colleges the most elastic, effective, comprehensive, 
and widely influential educational agencies in the world. In 
his own sensible and independent way he had opened even- 
ing lectures in practical subjects for the artisan class. Long 
before the days of university extension hundreds of Provi- 
dence jewelers entered these courses in metallurgy, chemistry . 
and kindred subjects. It was he too who first emancipated 
the American college from the immemorial trivium of Greek, 
Latin, and mathematics. True, the curriculum was meager 
enough, even after the enrichment in courses which he brought 

23 



24 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

about, if one compares it with the vast a la carte for '96 of 
Johns Hopkins or of the University of Chicago. Yet there 
were compensations which amply made up for any apparent 
poverty in instruction. Emphasis was laid on training and dis- 
cipline. Power of assimilation rather than amount and variety 
of acquisition constituted the end of education. The claims 
of character, too, were considered, as well as those of scholar- 
ship. 

The output of the New England college before the present 
era of expansion and specialization was, therefore, wonderfully 
true, tempered, and substantial. It was hand-made, of se- 
lected raw material, with the personal touch of such masters 
as Wayland, Mark Hopkins, and Timothy Dwight inefface- 
ably inwrought. These distinctive qualities, this peculiar tim- 
bre, which can be imparted only by human contacts, is more 
rare as universities become assimilated to the wholesale, fac- 
tory tone of our civilization. The successful president now is 
the one who secures the most numerous legacies, the most 
sumptuous dormitories for his college. He no longer draws 
and moulds and shapes young men. He no longer visits and 
counsels and, if need be, prays with them. He has not the 
sense of accountability which made the great president of 
Brown say, quoting Arnold, that if he could ever receive a 
fresh boy from his father without emotion he would think it 
high time to be off. He is now a mere executive. 

And just as at that time there was no middle wall of parti- 
tion 'twixt student and authorities, so there had not then arisen 
the minor distinctions of caste based upon wealth which now 
divide student from student. The children of Midas had not 
then built unto themselves stately and luxurious dwellings in 
the precincts of intellectualism. Beck Hall and Vanderbilt 
were undreamed of. Iron weighed more than gold. The 
youths in tennis flannels who gather and smoke hookahs in 
these gorgeous dormitories would have received little recogni- 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 25 

tion among the sturdy, self-supporting, hard-battling fellows 
from the back farms. Poverty was the rule, affluence was the 
exception — a condition of things largely reversed in our Eastern 
universities. At Brown the catalogue summary of necessary 
expenses for 1856 foots up to the amusingly insignificant sum 
of sixty-seven dollars. This covered tuition, room-rent, lights, 
fuel, and minor expenses. The entire charges for a collegiate 
year, therefore, amounted to somewhat less than one fifth the 
present-day room-rent of a single student in one of the gilded 
fin-de-siecle palaces of Yale or Harvard. Board, of course, was 
not included in this estimate. It averaged for the poorer stu- 
dent something under two dollars a week. Students frequently 
boarded themselves, living, as did a contemporary of Gordon's 
at college who became distinguished later, upon the extremely 
meager sum of seventy-five cents weekly. As with Scotch 
students, oatmeal was in this instance a staple in the dietary. 
This inconsiderable pecuniary outlay enabled hundreds of 
young men who became afterward exceedingly useful in all 
walks of life to gain an education from which nowadays they 
would be debarred as by an impassable wall. 

At best, even with these favoring circumstances, it was a 
hard struggle for one student in the late fifties. Assistance 
from home he could hardly look for. Church friends in Provi- 
dence helped much; yet at times the exchequer verged peril- 
ously upon bankruptcy. On one occasion, when it seemed 
hardly possible to continue for want of money, Gordon started 
down Westminster Street in an aimless state of dejection. A 
sudden shower drove him into a porch. Somewhat later a 
ragged and wayworn negro hurried under the same cover, and, 
seeing the kindly student face, thought it an opportune time 
to beg. He laid his whole pitiable case, with its undoubted 
fringe of exaggeration and extended commentary, before his 
fellow-refugee. The latter, at the time as impecunious as 
Walter the Penniless himself, was of course unable to respond. 



26 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

He explained his own plight, answering the other's fiction 
with a detailed recital of his own difficulties. The new ac- 
quaintance listened with interest, and finally drew from his 
pocket a nickel, which he handed his anticipated benefactor 
with the remark that, after all, he thought himself better off 
than a struggling student. 

Gordon was twenty years old when he entered upon his 
college course. As the average age was several years less, 
there was much that was boyish in the character of the lower 
classmen. The traditions of practical joking, now happily 
almost wholly faded out of university life, traditions surviving, 
perhaps, from the wandering student life of the middle ages 
with the tenacity of nursery rhymes, flourished with vigor. 
There were night-gown parades on hot summer evenings. 
There were burials of hated text-books in the blue waters of 
the Narragansett, when brass bands played solemn dirges and 
orators delivered Latin valedictories. There was much ob- 
noxious hazing of freshmen. Boys in the full consciousness 
of second-year rank are apt to take special delight in humili- 
ating those below them ; it seems in some way to accentuate 
their recent promotion. In the present case their ardor was 
doubly inflamed by the fact that the subject to be treated was 
a student for the ministry, and possessed, therefore, presuma- 
bly, with a wholesome aversion to rowdyism and nicotine. 

When a freshman of but a few weeks' standing, Gordon was 
visited in his room, " smoked out," and imperiously ordered by 
his visitors to mount the table and preach a sermon. The 
new-comer's resources in this line had not been suspected. 
With admirable appositeness he chose as his text, "A cer- 
tain man w r ent down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell 
among thieves." Never was more pointed discourse delivered. 
Never was application of subject-matter to immediate circum- 
stances made more mercilessly. The listeners, taking umbrage, 
rushed like beasts of Ephesus at the speaker, upset the table, 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 27 

and would have treated him hardly indeed if his Christianity 
had not passed forthwith from its didactic to its muscular 
phase, with excellent results. He sprang at the ring-leader, 
tore his coat in halves, and, with the efficient cooperation of 
John Hay,* who just then appeared on the scene, routed the 
intruders from the premises. 

The years in Brown were years of diligent application, of 
recognizable progress. In pure scholarship Gordon took but 
medium rank. The inadequacy of his " fit " was as ball and 
chain to the runnels ankle. Yet his native gifts were ac- 
knowledged by all. His reading at this time was exten- 
sive and within certain limits multifarious in character. We 
have before us a copy of Todd's " Index Rerum " close 
packed with quotations, indicating, as by graduated scale, 
the quantity of illustration and reference which was gath- 
ering for use in later years like water in a mountain pool. 
Carlyle, as was fitting in those days, occupies a prominent 
place in its pages. Byron, Coleridge, Mrs. Browning, Ruskin, 
Archbishop Leighton, Bunsen, Edward Irving, Pascal, Richter, 
St. Augustine, John Foster, and Tholuck are names that recur 
again and again. A love for devotional reading was early 
developed. Thomas Fuller's writings and the quaint " Religio 
Medici " of Sir Thomas Browne were favorites with the medi- 
tative young student. In his regular work, special aptitude 
in composition was noticeable. A warm interest in the clas- 
sics, too, could not be wanting in those fortunate enough to 
read the Greek tragedies with Professor Harkness, and the 
Satires and Epodes of Horace with John L. Lincoln. The 
accurate scholarship, the delicate humor, the fine, discriminat- 
ing literary sense of the latter made him for two generations 
the especial favorite of young men. To hear his " Bene," 
" ©prime," after an unusually felicitous translation was suffi- 

* Later known as the private secretary and biographer of President 
Lincoln. 



28 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

cient reward for hours of night study. Here was no " gerund- 
grinder, ,, but one to whom Latin was literature and the clas- 
sics "humanities." To please "Johnny Link," as he was 
endearingly called, was an indirect way, therefore, of obtain- 
ing recognition for one's own scholarship and taste, inasmuch 
as that alone gratified him which was refined, subtle, delicately 
flavored. During Gordon's second year a prize was offered 
for the best Latin essay. One of his classmates, who had 
unjustly, though good-naturedly, animadverted upon his dili- 
gence as a student, announced with boyish loquacity and with 
much confidence his determination to capture the prize. 
Gordon with characteristic reticence, coupled with a humor- 
ous resolve to defeat his confident friend, went to work, wrote 
out his theme, and passed it in to the committee. In due 
time it was returned with the announcement of his success. 
He had appealed to Professor Lincoln's inordinate love of 
Horace by importing into his paper as many Horatian expres- 
sions and turns of thought as he could. The flavor of the 
Odes, as of old Chianti, pleased the professor's palate. His 
vote was cast decisively for the essayist who shared his appre- 
ciation for the vers de societe of old Rome. 

The severest test of character is that which considers the 
every-day life, which scrutinizes those close personal relations 
involved in the occupancy of a common room and the daily 
use of the same student-lamp. How well Gordon stood this 
test the following communication will show. The copartners 
on the long ladders at New London had entered Brown the 
same year. Throughout the college course they lived together 
in the third story of old University Hall, the windows of which 
look out over the elms of the campus upon the city and bay 
and westering sun below. So long an association is fruitful 
in incident. Many are the stories of those days which have 
come down to us illustrating the humor, the geniality, the bon- 
homie of Gordon's character. These traits were in later years, 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 29 

at least to outsiders, obscured by the gravity and preoccu- 
pation which the stress of great responsibilities occasioned. 
In younger days they had full rein. In company he was 
the first called upon to sing. The dialogues and comedies 
which he collaborated with his room-mate became a tradi- 
tion of the preparatory school. There is one amusing story 
of these days— a story we should hardly venture to introduce 
if we had not heard it from the victim of its point himself— 
which reminds one of a well-known incident connected with 
the Methodist leaders of the last century. On one occasion, 
when Wesley and Whitefield were on their evangelistic circuits 
together, they retired for the night to a single room. White- 
field, being very weary, tumbled into bed with scarce a prayer. 
Wesley, equally tired, insisted on longer devotions, but fell 
asleep on his knees, much to the amusement of Whitefield, 
whom he had chided for negligence. The latter made haste 
to relieve as far as possible Wesley's mortification by summa- 
rily waking him. 

In the present instance no such mercy was shown. Gor- 
don's room-mate, impulsive and full of enthusiasm for the 
Lord's work, was somewhat apt to question the interest of 
his undemonstrative friend along these lines. Being at one 
time greatly impressed with the need of a religious awakening 
in college, he went around inviting students to his room for 
concerted prayer. On the evening assigned for the meeting 
a dozen or more students met together. All were bent in 
earnest supplication. Some eight or nine had taken part, and 
the time had come for the organizer of the meeting himself 
to pray. After a long pause, it was perceived, to the great 
enjoyment of all, that he had dropped asleep. As if by one 
impulse, the rest arose and filed out of the room. Gordon 
himself remained, put out the lights, went to bed, and slept 
soundly until, several hours later, the chill morning air had 
brought his room-mate to a full consciousness of the situation. 



30 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

It is in these terms, then, that this companion of the long 
student years characterizes his old friend : 

" I wish to bear testimony to the majestic character and 
exalted worth and influence of my classmate and lifelong 
friend, Dr. Gordon. For six years in academy and college — 
a portion of that time as room-mates — we lived in relations 
of tenderest intimacy. The same serenity of disposition, the 
same fine equipoise that has marked his riper years was char- 
acteristic of his youth. I cannot recall, during all this period 
of uninterrupted intercourse, a single instance of petulance or 
irritation. I cannot remember a single utterance from his lips 
that he might have wished unspoken. His religious life was 
steadfast, cheerful, and uniform, free from short-lived raptures 
on the one hand, and seasons of lukewarmness on the other. 
The unfaltering purpose of declaring the gospel of the grace 
of God, with which his own life had been enriched, dominated 
him completely, and from this he never, amid the ambitions 
and temptations of college life, for one instant swerved. He 
was a moral and spiritual leader in college, apparently without 
the slightest thought of being such, and without any special 
effort on his part, just as he has since been in the broader 
sphere of life. He realized more perfectly than any man I 
now recall the high ideal of a deep, genuine, uncompromising 
piety, without the least trace of austerity or sanctimoniousness 
or asceticism. There was in him a delightful vein of humor, 
always, however, so graciously tempered that it never de- 
scended, as is frequently the case, to the level of coarseness 
or levity, and was never suffered to become an occasion of 
wounding the feelings of the most sensitive. He was withal 
so natural, so consistent, so magnanimous, so charitable, that 
he won the love and admiration of all ; yes, even of those who 
were utterly ignorant of or indifferent to the heavenly grace 
that dwelt so richly in him." 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 31 

It was in these years that a new and important tributary 
entered Gordon's life. We begin to find a greater volume of 
correspondence — letters, too, which reveal more precisely the 
interior man. It is as if, after a long, blank interim, a num- 
ber of photographs had been taken in rapid succession, por- 
traying all the finer lines of the heart's expression. Acquain- 
tance had been formed with the young woman who became 
in later years his wife and the efficient helpmate in all his en- 
terprises. A quarter-century after his happy college years 
had closed, he returned to Providence, a trustee now of the 
university, and went up into the old room which he had occu- 
pied in the fifties. Sitting there with all the memories of the 
past flooding his mind, he wrote back to Boston this noble 
letter to her whom he always called the most valued treasure 
which he carried away from the university town : 

" No. 44 University Hall, 

" Brown University, Providence, R. I., 
" June 21, i860. 

[Actual date, June, 1882.] 
" Miss Maria T. Hale, 

" Dear Friend : I am sitting in my room for a few mo- 
ments after the commencement dinner meditating. I just saw 
you come down Prospect Street and turn down College Street, 
and I almost thought you cast a glance upward to my win- 
dow, as if to say, . . . ' I would not object to your joining 
me in a walk.' Excuse my presumption in suggesting such 
an idea, but you know that I have now and then run down to 
join you, and you never were greatly opposed to my doing so. 
Well, I have just finished my studies in this honored univer- 
sity, and from my lofty lookout in this old ante-Revolutionary 
building I am gazing into the future and dreaming of what 
it shall be. I know you will pardon me for repeating my 
dream, since it is only a dream. It seemed to me that twenty- 



32 AD ON I RAM JUDSON GORDON 

two years had passed, and the pale-faced, slender student had 
become a portly man of forty-six. He had become, more- 
over, a minister of a large city parish with a wide field and 
great responsibilities. Through the dim mists of futurity I 
see his house and his family. I count his children — five 
ruddy and splendid children ; and a shadow in which the out- 
lines of two others are faintly descried sleeping as though they 
were and yet were not. And there is the fair vision of the 
wife ; I cannot name her here, but she looks strangely like 
one whom I just saw passing. I dream that people say of 
her that she is wonderfully efficient, and that a large share of 
her husband's success is due to her; that she has inspired 
him, who used to be rather slow and backward, with much of 
her energy and enthusiasm. They say, indeed, that, between 
his hold and her push, the result is a pretty strong team ; that 
they are the center of no mean circle of activities. And I 
dream that she sometimes interprets his natural reserve and 
stolidity and abstractedness as indifference, and she says that 
he doesn't appreciate her. Then his heart opens, and he says, 
' Nay ; never man had such a helpmeet, and if she bears 
many burdens and does much hard work for him, he thanks 
her in his heart, and prays that the Lord may spare her for 
many years to walk by his side.' And the thought became so 
emphatic and the emotions so strong that he repeated the last 
words aloud— walk by his side— and that woke him up. Yes ; 
here I am in the window of 44, looking down College Street, 
and you are just coming back with a book in your hand, from 
the Athenaeum, I suppose. And so I have written it all out. 
When will you take another of those moonlight walks out to- 
ward the Red Bridge and round by the Friends' College? 
Excuse my boldness ; for I remember that, though you are 
not shy, you are often a little offish — well, no matter; when 
shall we have the walk? And do so arrange it, if we go, that 
your venerable father shall not stand at the door to welcome 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 33 

you in and to wave me off with that sweeping gesture. But 
then I do not mean anything or much ; that is, I don't mean 
to mean more than you would have me mean, since you have 
said that we must be no more than friends. So good-by from 

" Your esteemed friend, 

"A. J. Gordon." 



CHAPTER III 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 



Seminary life at Newton — Influence of Dr. Hackett — Pastor of the 
Jamaica Plain Church — Letters — Called to Clarendon Street — 
Criticism of Robertson on baptism — The Church Unity Society 
examined 

THE time for special preparation for life-work had now 
arrived. In i860 Gordon entered the theological school 
at Newton. Located on a commanding hilltop, the institution 
buildings afforded one a view of real beauty. An undulating 
country of meadow and pasture, not yet built over with the 
suburban villas of Boston merchants, stretched in all direc- 
tions. The faint blue top of Monadnock could be descried in 
the north, while the flashing dome of the state-house sent its 
reflection into the west of summer afternoons. 

Contiguity to Boston brought the new-comer into new 
climates of opinion. Speculation and the standing discussions 
of New England were in the sixties, however, brushed aside 
by portentous public events. The nation was entering into 
the valley of darkness. The remission of sin which it had 
hoped to find in interminable compromises was to come now 
in the blood of a thousand battles. Walking into Boston 
to browse among the old book-stores of Cornhill, Gordon is 
attracted by a vast crowd about the entrances to Tremont 
Temple. He asks the cause of the gathering, and is told that 
they are mobbing Phillips within. At another time he goes 
in to see the immense night parade organized during the first 

34 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 35 

Lincoln campaign. As he stands at the gates of the Com- 
mon, an unending stream of torches pours past him over the 
historic slopes. He can think only of the vast musterings in 
Milton. We find him eagerly reading Gasparin's new book, 
" The Struggle of Christianity with Slavery," and later, with 
every one else in the North, the second series of the " Bige- 
low Papers." The martyrdom of John Brown sets his cor- 
respondence fairly ablaze. This, after all, is not strange ; for 
he had been bred in the strictest sect of the abolitionists, his 
father of the woolen-mill being an antislavery debater and 
lecturer in the local lyceums of New Hampshire ; while the 
Providence home, whither most of his letters are directed, had 
from early days been visited by Garrison and his confreres. 
As the gloomy tragedy deepened, he was led to consider per- 
sonal accountability in the crisis. Almost all of his male rela- 
tives were at the front, and he himself seriously meditated 
joining a New Hampshire regiment. But the family invest- 
ment had been placed in his education, and the family verdict 
decided finally against the project. 

Of the new surroundings, with their somewhat subdued 
atmosphere, he speaks half jocularly as follows : 

" Newton is such a contrast to college. I am almost lost 
when I go into recitations and find such stillness and decorum. 
I have never in my life longed so much for some genuine out- 
burst of fun, and I am really afraid that in an unguarded 
moment I shall break over all the proprieties and disturb the 
still air with the tones of some jolly college psalm. Yet I 
cannot but rejoice in the quiet of the place and in the advan- 
tages for study which it affords." 

The special advantages to which he refers were larger 
liberty in the use of time, enabling him to rummage about in 
libraries, and the companionship and direction of the great 
master, Dr. Hackett, in his favorite study, New Testament 
exegesis. We find him more deeply immersed than ever in 



36 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

hymnology, devotional literature, and the Fathers. Krumma- 
cher, " The Hymns of the Ages," and A Kempis fed his spiritual 
life. Patristic literature he searched to find, not buttresses for 
ecclesiastical pretension, but fellowship in a common love 
and service. 

" I have been reading," he says, " with a delight which is 
to me of the very highest kind, the writings of the old Fathers. 
Their quaintness is only equaled by their sweetness. I have 
perhaps a peculiar taste in this respect, and were I to buy all 
my favorite books, I am sure my library would be of quite 
an antique cast. St. Augustine's ' Confessions ' afford delinea- 
tions of almost seraphic raptures. They give one an idea of 
what Christianity is able to impart to him who is willing to 
bear its sternest self-denials. ... I feel, with him, what we 
most of all need is the power to commune with God. I know 
of no greater attainment than the ability to hold unbroken 
communion with the Saviour, closing up those avenues through 
which sinful thoughts and vain desires steal in, and, as A 
Kempis says, making of the soul a tabernacle with but one 
window, and that for Christ." 

Of those other Fathers, the Fathers of Reformed Christianity, 
he made fast friends. Rutherford's " Letters " were discovered 
in an old issue of 1826, uncut and thick with dust. Its jew- 
els of meditation and ecstasy were gathered with eager hands. 
This volume held him throughout life with the charm of an 
abiding fascination. Reference is made again and again, in 
his Newton letters, to "sweet Rutherford." And with these 
references, in a contrast which is almost grotesque in its ex- 
treme remove, are coupled appreciative allusions to contem- 
porary humorists : 

" I wish Artemus Ward would bring out something new. 
What should we do without those benefactors of the human 
race, the humorists? Wouldn't society stagnate? Wouldn't 
sanctimoniousness become soon the presiding genius where 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 37 

now only a decent gravity and a moderate decorum reign? 
I see an advantage in trying to weave a little of this element 
into the texture of my clerical web that is now making." 

The influence of the great teacher, Hackett, that extraordi- 
narily erudite rabbi, with his little, shrunk frame, mobile face, 
and spectacled eyes, was the most important of those years. 
With him were made those laboratory studies in Greek, as ex- 
acting and as scientific as if the two were scrutinizing a tissue 
or a cell with the most powerful Zeiss microscope. It was 
said of Hackett that " he never went into his class, during the 
whole forty years of his career as a teacher, without a new in- 
vestigation and revision of the lesson for the hour," and " that 
no man has lived, in America at least, who has been able to 
impress the most minute and recondite indications of the 
Greek original upon the minds of New Testament students." 
From him Gordon learned that " every phrase of the New 
Testament has a meaning definite and single — a meaning that 
can be accurately ascertained and clearly expressed according 
to fixed and settled laws of human speech." From him he 
got " that reverent regard for divine revelation which, on the 
one hand, brooks no mystical importation of human fancies 
into the sacred text, and, on the other, does not permit the 
smallest Greek article or conjunction to be treated as an idle 
or ambiguous thing in that Word, which holy men of old 
wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." * 

The years at Newton passed smoothly. Gordon writes 
frequently of visits to Providence— " visits," as he said, " which 
form pleasant little inns for hope and anticipation to rest them- 
selves in as they journey out into the future." The letters 
which he sent to the same home, like faded rose-leaves long 
kept, full of suggestions of life and color, exhale an aroma of 
contentment and gratitude. 

* Memorial Address by Dr. A. H. Strong on Horatio Balch Hackett, 
D.D. 



3% ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Health was returning. " I am better than for a long time," 
he writes. " Trials are good, but I sometimes think happiness 
makes me more religious even than grief. I know I never felt 
more devoutly thankful for blessings which seem clearly to 
have come from God." And again: "I have concluded to 
avoid brooding over any anxieties. I have learned to believe 
it wrong. It is gathering and pressing together into an intol- 
erable burden the troubles which God has mercifully scattered 
over years of time. I confess I cannot see so far and so dis- 
tinctly the path of my future life as I was confident I could in 
boyhood, before I thought of the possibility of such a thing 
as adversity or disappointment. Still when I have taken one 
step I have always had light enough to see where to take the 
next. So I try quietly to adopt the words of Christ, * Take 
no thought for the morrow.' ' Do the duty that lies nearest 
to thee ' has become quite a motto for me. We need to be 
patient above all things. I am anxious, too, that you as well 
as myself may learn that generous and self-denying labors for 
others bring the sweetest and richest rewards. The smallest 
action may thus be made noble, and the very drudgery of life 
become divine. I sometimes hope that it is one of the lessons 
which experience is gradually teaching me, that if I am to be 
anything that is truly good and noble, it must be by conquer- 
ing those narrow and sordid ambitions by which the world is 
so much controlled. Still I am aware I have enough of them." 

To those three too frequent intruders into the contemporary 
pulpit, a metaphysical jargon, a shallow Pelagianism, and a 
uniformed officialism, he makes references in different letters. 
Going into Boston, he strays into church, and listens to the 
philosophical essay of a distinguished pulpiteer. He remarks 
that it is "too full of scholastic terms and metaphysical tech- 
nicalities, which are even more objectionable than cant and 
slang; for ordinary people can comprehend the latter, but 
very rarely the former " ; adding confidentially to the pro- 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 39 

spective minister's wife, "which would you rather have me 
use ? " 

On the receipt of a hand-wrought sermon-case from the 
same intimate correspondent, he says, mingling theology and 
love-making in a way not necessary to divulge here : 

" I will try to do as you request, and write some good ser- 
mons for it, practical because spiritual. There is nothing prac- 
tical in religion but the spiritual. I feel that I must not dis- 
guise the fact that men are sinners, though that may seem to 
be an antiquated idea and an exploded theory of Jonathan 
Edwards. If they are as much so as I am, I am quite safe in 
making the statement." 

The next extract repels the bantering imputation of clerical- 
ism with some heat : 

" There is one thing about which I am going to remonstrate 
with you. I don't wish you to use the term ' white cravat* 
in any way to me. It is no more a symbol of the ministry 
than a bald head or a sore finger. It is worn, I know, but 
generally by the men who need something to bring them up 
to the standard of a decent debility." 

The seminarist was now beginning to preach in small country 
and suburban churches — entering upon a sort of pastoral clinic 
introductory to his coming career. He had preached occasion- 
ally in the church of his own village. Often in later years did he 
describe that first placid morning when with fluttering heart he 
stood up before a full congregation of critically curious neigh- 
bors and relatives. His own two grandmothers, impartial and 
rigid as two Norns stepped out of an Icelandic saga, occupied 
the front seat, to pass judgment upon his orthodoxy. When 
asked after service as to their opinion, the one kept ominous 
silence ; the other retorted that she " had known it all before." 
But such unresponsiveness must, after all, have been the child 
of an honest family pride that refused to betray itself from 
very self-consciousness; for everywhere else he was received 



40 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

with kindly appreciation, though with popular expressions of 
surprise at his apparently extreme youth. "The people, 

D tells me, were quite astonished to see such a boy in 

the pulpit, and made various conjectures about his age, none 
of them going above seventeen or eighteen. In passing down 
the middle aisle to-day after meeting, I was accosted by an 
estimable, near-sighted lady, who was apparently considering 
the current opinion as to my age, with the somewhat confus- 
ing question, ' Do you suppose that that young man really 
wrote the sermon himself? ' " 

The Sundays were spent in this way among the various 
churches of eastern Massachusetts. Now and again he felt 
disheartened. " There seems to be so little real appreciation 
of what has cost so much toil of brain, and so little apparent 
good from the words spoken." At other times he was greatly 
encouraged. One day, just previous to his graduation, a let- 
ter was received from the Baptist society in Jamaica Plain, 
asking the young minister to " supply " the pulpit there. The 
gentle, open face and thoughtful sermon won the hearts of all ; 
at the month's end he was "called." 

On the evening of the 12th of June, 1863, the little church 
was hung with greenery, and the people were assembled for 
the ordination service. We have before us the faded printed 
" Program for the Installation of Mr. Adoniram Judson 
Gordon as Pastor of the Jamaica Plain Church, West Rox- 
bury." There was the usual formal sermon, the charge, the 
blessing by the older ministers present. Then all united in 
the familiar, fervent hymn : 

" Gird thou his heart with strength divine; 
Let Christ through all his conduct shine ; 
Faithful in all things may he be, 
Dead to the world, alive to thee," 

and the simple exercises were over. 

The village of Jamaica Plain was at that time perhaps the 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 41 

most delightful spot in the outskirts of Boston. It was a 
suburb of close-shaven lawns, well besprinkled, across which 
querulous robins ran, and over whose walks spirea, flaming- 
rhododendrons, and gorgeous, golden forsythia hung in profu- 
sion. Bending elms and thick-foliaged chestnut-trees lined 
the roads. Pleasant homes, deep bedded in shrubbery, and 
filled with books and all the comforts of an ample, affluent life, 
welcomed the new pastor in his round of calls. His own 
house stood just at the edge of a sedate little pond, not far 
from the place where the heroic Parkman, battling with dis- 
ease, raised incomparable roses and wrote incomparable his- 
tories. The church where Theodore Parker preached lay off 
a mile or two in West Roxbury, and in the same direction the 
undulating meadows of Brook Farm, long since deserted of 
its idealist and book-writing tenantry, stretched their grassy 
slopes under the sun. Altogether the new surroundings were 
well suited to a man of quiet tastes. His marriage, which 
occurred soon after his settlement at the Plain, heightened 
the joy of the new home. And with all these circumstances 
contributing to his happiness, there went along a deep grati- 
tude to God for his mercies — a gratitude reflected in the letters 
written to his wife when he was called away from his own 
church to speak. In the note from which the following is 
taken, after dwelling on his recent marriage he says : 

" But I look back on the time when I first realized that we 
were one in Christ, and a higher gratitude fills my heart for 
that. Dear wife, I wonder now, when the though! of our life 
in Christ so fills my soul, that we do not talk more about it. 
Oh, what is it to be joined together in the Lord, to be the 
privileged guests of the constant bridal of the Lamb? My 
heart is filled with love to Jesus while I write. ' Whom have 
I in heaven but him, and there is none on the earth that I 
desire beside him.' I want to go everywhere trying to per- 
suade men to be reconciled to God through him." 



42 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

And again : 

" I sometimes fear that my perfect happiness and content- 
ment in my home, and my complete earthly bliss with my 
wife, may lead me to forget God. Let us make it a special 
subject of prayer that God may keep us from forgetting him 
or neglecting our duty to him. And when you come back to 
me, may I find you with a heart not only glowing with a love 
for me, but kindled with a more intense devotion to our dear 
Lord and Master Jesus Christ. How I thank God that you 
love him with me! and I do believe that even in heaven I shall 
rejoice that these hands were permitted to bury you in death 
with him by baptism, and raise you up in the likeness of his 
resurrection. Bless the Lord." 

We get an idea of the young minister's personal appearance 
from a portrait painted about this time. It shows us a wealth 
of chestnut hair brushed across a high forehead, grave though 
kindly eyes of an indeterminate blue-gray shade, spare cheeks, 
a full under lip suggestive of meditative moods, and a mouth 
mobile and genial, ready at any moment for harmless pleasan- 
try, with jaws behind it locked in the decision of strongly held 
convictions. His height was above the medium. The years 
of study, however, had left him with a frame somewhat scant- 
ily clothed upon, which contrasted markedly with the massive 
mould of after-years. His voice was full, rich, flexible, yet a 
little roughened, they said, as a Cremona violin before it at- 
tains the mellow timbre of maturity. The old sexton of the 
Jamaica Plain Church still recalls him walking to and fro in 
the church vestry week-days persistently working to overcome 
this defect. In manner he w r as shy and reserved, though de- 
lightfully genial when once the restraints of new acquaintance 
were well melted. The social duties of a pastor— calling, giv- 
ing in marriage, and the like — demanded an expenditure of 
real effort, and were the source of much misgiving. We get 
a glimpse of this in the following letter : 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 43 

" I have just been interrupted by another couple to be 

married. One of the parties was Miss R . It is painful 

to stand in the presence of such a modest, shrinking couple 
with no possibility of getting up a conversation. I greatly 
wished you had been here to speak your piece beginning, ' I 
trust you may be as happy in your married life as 1/ etc. I 
really missed it, and was so embarrassed after I got through 
the service in thinking to myself, ' Well, there is something I 
have forgotten ; I am sure it does not seem quite complete.* 
I couldn't for the life of me think what it was till they had 
gone ; then it flashed upon my mind, ' Why, it's my wife's 
speech!' " 

If timid in the parlor, he was certainly not so in the pulpit. 
In an address given at this time, he reproaches " those minis- 
ters who start with ghostly horror at the thought of taking 
weapons against the iniquities which infest our land, who re- 
fuse to speak out against such sins as slavery and corruption 
in high places, but, with wonderful dexterity of conscience, 
dodge behind the shadow of what they call the dignity of the 
pulpit, and spend their days writing metaphysical disquisitions 
on long-forgotten theological jangles." He did not hesitate 
then more than in later life to " preach politics " when " poli- 
tics " was but the synonym for righteousness. In the dark 
days of '63 his voice rang out constantly and unequivocally 
in behalf of freedom and the Union, much to the disgust of 
many of his lukewarm parishioners. On a certain occasion, 
during the climax of one of these appeals, a " leading mem- 
ber " rose up in the body of the house, drew forth, with utmost 
deliberation, hymn-book, Psalter, and Testament from the rack 
in his pew, placed them resolutely under both armpits, and 
marched slowly down the main aisle and out of the church. 
Thus did he shake the dust from off his feet as a witness 
against this infamous commingling of the sacred with the 
secular, of the things of the Bible with those of the newspaper. 



44 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Never afterward was he seen in the church. Years passed ; 
Gordon had long since left the scene of his early ministry, and 
was settled over his Boston charge ; the solitary secession of 
that Sabbath morning was completely forgotten. One day he 
received a note asking him to attend a funeral in the suburbs. 
Street and number alone were given. On entering the house 
he was surprised to learn that the dead man was the stiff 
dissenter of war times. He had insisted on his death-bed 
that none other should conduct his funeral exercises than the 
young pastor of former days, "who never feared to preach 
what he believed." 

As a pastor, Gordon's relations with his people were most 
familiar, tender, in time. Formality had here no place. He 
was wont to gather his little flock around him in the Friday 
evening prayer-meetings, conferring, instructing, opening the 
Word, encouraging all in " the practice of the presence of 
God," and in the conflict with the temptations incident to the 
daily walk. The second year he preached a series of sermons 
on the development of the higher life, which indicated thus 
early the trend of his opinions and of his aspirations. Of one 
of these he writes : 

" I find it is so hard to preach as I desire, so many little 
ambitions thrusting themselves in to influence and shape my 
sermons. A right heart has, I believe, as much to do with 
the matter as anything. I think yesterday's sermon was well 
received. I only hope the doctrine was according to the mind 
of the Spirit, and that God was not displeased with it. I feel 
more and more the worthlessness of man's applause, and I 
have a deepening desire to please Christ in all such works. 
I send you a little notice of it (very flattering). It is only for 
you, dearest, not for myself." 

Six years flew by— years of study, of faithful pastoral work, 
of continuous growth. The little church developed in num- 
bers and power. Pastor and people were bound together in 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 45 

the bonds of a heart-deep affection. Three children were 
born into the home by the pond. We get a peep into that 
home life now and then through the aperture of the father's 
correspondence. 

" You will naturally ask," he writes on one occasion, " with 
your jealous disposition, if I have paid attention to any lady 
in your absence. I answer solemnly, none! Only your old 
dress fell at my feet as I was brushing through the closet, and 
in picking it up I involuntarily embraced it, and even clutched 
a kiss from the eloquent emptiness that protruded from the 
neck. I gazed this morning, I confess lovingly for a married 
man in his wife's absence, on one sweet face that crossed my 
path ; but it was in gilt and hung, and therefore I plead no 
guilt for myself, or at least a suspension of judgment. I will 
make a clean breast of it. I have stopped several times a day 
before a certain window, and gazed perhaps too admiringly 
on a beautiful maiden face that has looked out therefrom. 
But you will forgive me. It's only ' Wosa,' seated just as 
Haley left her in the little rocking-chair at the parlor window. 
What touching reminders of the loved ones these little things 
are! 'Wosa' sitting so demurely, waiting for the return of 
her little mistress, and your winter dress pendent from the nail 
in the closet — these can hold enough of the subtle element to 
impart a strong shock to one who comes en rapport. 

" P. S. — I send you the money, thereby showing my fidelity 
to my marriage vow, to love, honor, and buy things for you." 

But the cloud that was to overcast his sky had now appeared 
above the horizon. Seated alone in his study one evening in 
the fall of '67, writing on his Sunday sermon, and rocking 
now and then the cradle of his last baby, who slept placidly 
beside him, he was suddenly startled by a sharp pull at his 
door-bell. That ring was to resound in his ears for the next 
two years, keeping him in a distress of doubt and hesitation. 
For it was the first summons to a new field of labor. The 



46 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

servant was even then ushering into his diminutive parlor the 
accredited delegates from an important pastorless Boston 
church, who came to tender him a call " hearty and unani- 
mous." Should he accept? Impossible! No man was ever 
more loved by his people. No home was ever dearer to father 
and husband than the one where he was sitting. No field of 
usefulness could offer more opportunities for a measured, yet 
none the less vital, religious activity. His declination was 
given out of hand, and was soon followed by a more formal 
and decisive refusal. But the end was not yet. A year 
passed, and still the city church was without a head, and still 
the delegations continued to call at the suburban manse. 
" Why will they not let me alone," he writes, " and not press 
their suit? I wish I were out of it. If you will go to them 
and get me off in my absence, and agree that they shall never 
trouble me again, I will give you half of my kingdom. I am 
well-nigh insane over the matter. Tell all my flock how I 
love them, and how I loathe the pastures of Boston and the 
bulls of State Street, which are worse than those of Bashan. 
Thank God, their call cannot divide me from you, though it 
may thrust me forth from my Paradise. What a comfort it 
must have been to Adam that, though expelled from Eden, 
Eve went with him!" 

At the expiration of the first year he yielded, and wrote out 
a letter of acceptance. But this step was followed by a re- 
vulsion of feeling. The letter was torn to pieces with many 
expressions of self-recrimination for his disloyalty to the church 
of his first love. Finally, however, the pressure became too 
strong, and, after two years of waiting, he agreed to become 
pastor of the Clarendon Street Church. In the month of 
December, 1869, amid the universal mourning of the flock, he 
left Jamaica Plain to take up the work the completion of 
which was to constitute the capital achievement of his life. 

His Meisterjahre had ?iow begu?i! 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 47 

Two long-buried and long-forgotten essays, contributed to 
the " Baptist Quarterly " in these years, give one a glimpse 
into the things which then occupied his mind. In his after 
ministry he distinctly abandoned all that would suggest po- 
lemics, aiming to be, not a champion, but a proclaimer of the 
gospel. That he could reason closely and hit strongly— that 
he had a keen appreciation of his opponent's weak points, and 
of the opportunities which these offered — is seen in the sub- 
joined extracts. To lay aside the tempting weapon of wit 
and of aggressive discussion, so easily and so admirably used, 
must indeed have cost much self-restraint. It evidences, too, 
a clearly changed conviction as to the duty of a Christian: 
to endure reproach, to disregard opposition, and to preach the 
simple gospel without turning to right or left— this was to be 
the program of the maturer years. 

In the first of these articles he outlines and criticizes the 
position which F. W. Robertson had taken on the question 
of baptismal regeneration. He follows the anise-seed bag of 
Robertson's reasonings in its whole tortuous career, doubling 
with it when it doubled, running down upon it on every 
straight course of honest logic, detecting the scent where it 
seems least perceptible, and where a less close reasoner would 
be surely confounded. He breaks the ice, and beneath the 
shining rhetoric shows us the black, chill current of soph- 
istry. We take from this paper the following suggestive ex- 
tracts : 

" It was a favorite theory of Robertson's that truth is a 
union of two contradictories. Rejecting that method in the- 
ology which seeks to go between two opposite views, and to 
find the truth in a kind of middle region, or temperate zone, 
removed alike from either extreme, he regarded all great 
truths as having such a latitude that they can embrace within 
themselves every zone and every temperature of belief. He 
would tell the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Romanist and 



48 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

the Protestant, that, however widely they may be separated 
from each other, their separation is, after all, only geographi- 
cal ; and that the belief of each is, in a certain sense, neces- 
sary for the equipoise and completeness of Christian doctrine. 
One is constantly discerning the influence of this pernicious 
maxim in his aversion to sharp discriminations and radical 
separations between the true and the false ; in his fondness for 
seeking the soul of goodness in things evil ; in his tendency to 
locate error on the extreme confines of truth rather than within 
another and totally different kingdom, and to look upon 
human depravity as rather a misconception by the soul of its 
true position, than an actual perversion from the right. In his 
discussions of the subject of baptism, this fault is everywhere 
apparent, and, though there is a great and admirably stated 
truth running through them all, it is always seen writhing, 
Laocoon-like, in the folds of the two ' contradictories,' and is 
therefore so disfigured and contorted that it presents no very 
engaging aspect. . . . 

" Robertson reduces regeneration to an exceedingly small 
matter. It is with him simply the giving of full credence to 
a piece of information. Baptism is the bearer of that informa- 
tion. It comes to a man who is stupidly sleeping in sin, and 
before he has ever asked for the portion of goods that falleth 
to him, or ever thought whether he has any portion, it puts 
its hand upon his head and says, ' You are hereby informed 
that you are a child of God and have a right to all the privi- 
leges and emoluments of sonship.' If perchance the person 
thus addressed is incredulous, and refuses to believe, the mes- 
sage immediately becomes practically reversed, and announces 
to him that he is a child of wrath ; that is, the ' eternal fact/ 
which was to be transmitted in the ' baptismal dew/ by com- 
ing in contact with the chilling unbelief of the candidate is 
precipitated into a practical fiction. . . . 

" 'Baptism does not create the fact; it reveals it. 1 It is the 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 49 

divine philosopher's stone, whose touch transmutes a de jure 
condition into a de facto one. The pure gold of grace was 
present, however, just as really before as after the subtle pro- 
cess of spiritual alchemy, but undiscerned by its fortunate 
possessor and unrecognized by God. Now it is discovered, 
assayed, and stamped with God's image and superscription, 
and put into circulation. 

" All this is beautiful and satisfactory enough till some per- 
son brings back one of these rare coins to this ecclesiastical 
mint, and, displaying it all rusted and corroded with the pomps 
and vanities of this world, protests that it is spurious. In such 
a case it would seem that our author would be driven to the 
admission that some of his de jure material was not genuine, 
and that the stamp upon it was the symbol of an unreal value. 
Not at all. The whole difficulty lies in a want of confidence 
in it, and in a failure by the owner to recognize God's mark 
upon it. Let him believe that it is genuine, and it is genuine ; 
or, in Robertson's language, ' to believe the fact (declared in 
baptism), and to live it, is to be regenerate.' 

" Here is the same confusion of ideas introduced into the 
doctrine of baptism which the transubstantiator has introduced 
into the Lord's Supper. The thing demanded by the church 
in each case is the bringing in of the real presence into that 
which was designed simply for a sign and symbol. But in 
this instance both priest and people revolt from the material- 
ism which an open, literal introduction of it involves, and at- 
tempt, therefore, to bring it in by a metaphysical sleight of 
hand, the belief in a practical falsehood being the sine qua 
11011 condition to the realization of the truth. 

" ' Believe that you eat the body of Christ in the eucharist/ 
said Sir Thomas More, in his discussion with Erasmus, ' and 
you eat it.' 

" ' Believe that you are regenerated in your baptism,' says 
Robertson, ' and you are regenerated/ The divergence here 



50 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

from Scripture may be stated very briefly. The Bible repre- 
sents men as 'believing a lie, that they might be damned/ 
Robertson would have them believe a lie, that they might be 
saved. . . . 

" There is a saying of an old divine that a ' ceremony duly 
instituted is a chain of gold around the neck of faith ; but if, 
in the wish to make it coessential and cosubstantial, you draw 
it closer and closer, it may strangle the faith it was meant to 
deck and designate. 1 This, we believe, is exactly what Rob- 
ertson's argument does. He did not wish to make baptism 
coessential and cosubstantial with regeneration, but his creed 
required it. And so, while attempting to take off the coarse 
and cumbersome chain which Rome has forged upon the neck 
of regeneration, he has substituted another, wrought of finer 
substance, and forged into an almost invisible tenuity ; whose 
delicate links of sophistry and error, while they bind in a less 
oppressive bondage, suffocate with no less certain death. 

" The doctrine of a radical renewal by the Holy Ghost, of 
a thorough revolution and reconstruction of the moral nature 
by the sovereign agency of the Spirit of God — a change 
wrought in time, and made recognizable to the consciousness 
— has no place in this theology. . . . 

" The strict Episcopal view makes baptism, when it has been 
performed, stand ever after for regeneration, as the currency 
represents the coin in the vault; but, at the same time, the 
church is so strongly convinced that her issue vastly exceeds 
the piety which she can show for it, that she asks the ' judg- 
ment of charity/ and so virtually goes into ecclesiastic insol- 
vency, though meanwhile still continuing to send forth her 
bonds. 

" The Pedobaptist who denies baptismal regeneration usu- 
ally puts the rite for a hoped-for renewal, thus making it simply 
promissory, with no security but the unmortgageable piety of 
others. Those who carry out Robertson's definition to its 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 51 

legitimate results make baptism stand for regeneration, 
vouched for by the best possible evidence in an inward ex- 
perience and in the external life. At the same time, they 
stand ready to recall the act when they are convinced that, 
through a mistake of judgment, it has been wrongly applied. 
So that, while, according to each view, the ordinance pro- 
fesses to represent the same thing, we believe that the last 
has every advantage for representing it most fairly, and hence 
is least open to the stigma of being a hollow form. . . . The 
view which is most scriptural, however, regards the act as pro- 
ceeding not from God, but from the candidate himself. It is 
not God's call or annunciation to him, but his sacramentum, 
or oath of allegiance, to Christ. If, through hypocrisy or self- 
deception, it is unworthily assumed, it is simply a false oath, 
and hence a totally invalid act ; and that is all that need be 
said concerning it. No elaborate device of logic is demanded 
for releasing God from a seeming breach of his covenant; 
nor, on the other hand, any subtle mystification of words for 
endowing a baptized man with a character which is out of 
harmony with both his life and his consciousness. 

" Baptism being, in our view, simply a divine symbolic lan- 
guage, given us for expressing certain spiritual ideas, can be 
truthful only as it is idiomatic— the vernacular, so to speak, 
of the new life. If strangers and foreigners use it, their ex- 
pression is to be taken as the expression of those who know 
not what they say. If deceivers employ it, it is simply wrested 
to the uses of perjury. . . ." 

The other article has in it just a trace of severity, which is 
not unnatural if one remembers the complacent assumption 
which characterizes the periodical summons to an Episcopal 
Canossa. In later years, when the subject of " church unity " 
was mentioned, Dr. Gordon was quite likely to tell good- 
humoredly the story of a quaint relative, a Congregational 
preacher, who defended " the validity of his ordination " by 



52 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

the contention that he was the best blacksmith who could 
make the best horseshoe, whether or no he could trace his 
descent from Tubal Cain. The hauteur of churchmen who 
" desire to be Catholic as well as Protestant, like those church- 
men of evil memory who would be neither hot nor cold," ceases 
to irritate when one estimates it properly. No Christian ex- 
periences any difficulty in realizing the most vital unity if only 
he has grace and honesty enough to treat his fellow-Christians 
as common followers of a common Lord, and if his sense is 
sufficiently acute to comprehend that money is money whether 
it be broken into silver bits or dressed in the pretentious garb 
of the greenback. That the young pastor, in his study and 
among his periodicals, was, perhaps, unduly incensed by "the 
eddy of purposeless dust " which the advocates of " unity " 
were raising, is evident from the extracts which follow. That 
he valued, however, to the utmost, the communion and coop- 
eration of the saints in the fieydXi] tKKXr]oia — that unity of the 
Spirit so far removed from a factitious uniformity, " icily regu- 
lar, splendidly null " — is clear from his whole subsequent career. 

This article was called out by the appeal of a recently formed 
" Christian Unity Society " ; of the appeal he says : 

"The spirit of the address is kind and conciliatory, as of 
course it could well afford to be. It denies in words that the 
unity sought requires ' absolute absorption and conversion into 
identity' with the church — conformity and uniformity in all 
things — but clearly proves the same in its arguments. In 
words it pays an appreciative tribute to the zeal and efficiency 
and usefulness of various Christian denominations, but in argu- 
ment declares their existence to be an evil. In words it seems 
to have an enthusiasm for the work proposed that is totally 
disinterested and magnanimous ; in argument it proves that its 
zeal is for its own church and for the welfare of its own dear- 
est cause. All this is natural enough. It does not offend. 
Only the whole subject suggests certain difficulties to our mind 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 53 

that the writer has failed to solve. These we propose at this 
time to consider. 

" The fundamental idea of the association is this : that non- 
conformity in religion is the great evil of the church, and that 
the highest success of the gospel can be attained only in ec- 
clesiastical uniformity. We believe, on the contrary, that there 
is much that is good, and much that calls for profound grati- 
tude, in the present economy of an externally divided church. 
It undoubtedly gives free scope to her varied and otherwise 
conflicting activities, brings harmony out of her antagonisms, 
and economizes forces by separating them, which must else 
be wasted by their own friction. How much, too, does the 
church owe to the existence of sects for clearness and com- 
pactness in the statement of her doctrines ; how many crude 
and unphilosophical symbols have been ground down and pol- 
ished by the attrition of controversy ; how much of error and 
misconception have been sifted out of the creeds by polemical 
winnowings and threshings ; how repeatedly have the accre- 
tions of falsehood, which in the course of time gather about 
religious truth, been removed by the sharp antagonisms of sec- 
tarian strife ; how many ideas, in fine, the most vital and pre- 
cious to the church, have, humanly speaking, been kept alive 
by the jealous circumspections of the denominations! The 
evils which result from monopoly of the gospel, perversions of 
it in the interest of a single church, biased interpretations and 
one-sided expositions, have unquestionably been very largely 
prevented by the presence and watchfulness of differing reli- 
gious orders. 

" ' Christianity/ says Bunsen, ' proves itself to be the reli- 
gion of the world by its power of surviving the inherent crises 
of development through which it has had to pass.' Yes, and, 
we add, by its power of fully meeting those crises out of its 
own resources ; of fitting itself into all the convolutions of his- 
tory ; of pushing itself out into the ever- varying want and woe 



54 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

of humanity. And how has it been able to do this ? By the 
diversity of its outward organizations ; by its ability to assume 
manifold forms of operation, and work successfully through 
them. 

" Methodism is an exact illustration of what we mean. It is 
perfectly clear that, at the time when it arose, the establish- 
ment had become so unwieldy, so hampered with civil and 
ecclesiastical rules, that it was utterly unable to meet the pre- 
vailing demand for a free and missionary gospel. If, here and 
there, a preacher was to be found who had true evangelical 
zeal, his jurisdiction was so prescribed by the fences of the 
church that his zeal profited him nothing. When John Ber- 
ridge undertook to carry salvation to the poor and unprivileged 
about him, on the ground that his conscience impelled him to 
seek to preach the gospel to every creature, he was summoned 
before the bishop with the rebuke, 'As to your conscience, 
you know that preaching out of your parish is contrary to the 
canons of the church.' 

" But Providence met the exigency. Out of the church, 
and in spite of her opposition, came forth that noble system of 
itinerancy which has carried salvation to thousands and tens 
of thousands, and has continued until this day one of the most 
potent agencies for reclaiming lost men. 

" But the churchman sees nothing in the origin of this soci- 
ety to rejoice over. 'All must feel,' says our author, 'how 
needless and how fearfully mixed with wrong on both sides 
was the Wesleyan separation/ Needless, forsooth ! No power 
on earth can forever check a living stream in its course. From 
the very dams that have restrained it, it- will every day gain 
strength for the inevitable rupture. Similarly, no device of 
priest or bishop can so choke the life of Christianity in the 
church as completely to shut it off from those who are panting 
for its blessings. It must break out somewhere, and if it be- 
comes irregular in its course, the fault lies with those who at- 



THE YOUNG MINISTER 55 

tempted to repress it. It is not a wrong on both sides. If 
the blood cannot flow in the arteries of the church because of 
the pressure of some human obstructions, then there must be 
an anastomosis. Vitality must be supplied to all the members 
of Christ's body. 

" There are evils of which this address makes no mention, 
and for which it proposes no remedy— the dull immobility, the 
stagnation of religious thought and of religious life, which 
have been invariable accompaniments of ecclesiastical uni- 
formity. Against these, sectarianism has been in constant 
antagonism. And if it had performed no other office, this 
were enough to secure it from the imputation of being an un- 
mitigated evil. 

" When the question comes between a dead uniformity and 
a living diversity, it would seem as if there could be very little 
difficulty in choosing. And yet we believe that the first of 
these conditions is the alternative offered us by this society. 

" As though the illustration which Romanism has given of 
a Christianity completely paralyzed by the clamps and con- 
straints of ritualism were not sufficient, it is now proposed to 
repeat the experiment : to take the faith of Christendom as it 
is held in solution by the various sects, and crystallize it about 
the Thirty-nine Articles or the Nicene Creed ; to constrain its 
varied devotion into exact and rigidly defined channels ; to 
put all its worship into regulation dress ; to compress its free 
and plastic life into concerted formulas and modes ; to sacrifice 
a variety which fully accords with a true unity to a unity 
that has no variety; and to call back all the 'children of 
the dispersion ' from their widely different yet spiritually ac- 
cordant labors, and bid them all march to the music and 
measure of the 'historic church. ' Theoretically the propo- 
sition is untenable enough, but practically it is even more so. 

1 To ask Methodism, with its splendid record of fidelity to 
the claims of a missionary gospel, with its noble history of 



56 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

self-sacrificing and evangelic labor, to come back and be ab- 
sorbed again into the church from which it sprang, abandon- 
ing that organism which, however faulty it may be in some 
respects, has penetrated a stratum of society that the cumber- 
some machinery of the Anglican Church never did, and never 
could, effectually reach ; to ask Congregationalism, after hav- 
ing stamped its polity upon our rising institutions, and done 
more than anything else to mould and determine that noble 
republicanism which we now enjoy, to return into a church 
whose whole genius and history has been so manifestly on the 
side of monarchy — is to ask simply that Romulus and Remus, 
after having grown to manhood, should go back and be suckled 
on that creed which nourished them kindly enough in their 
infancy, but which was never designed to feed them in ma- 
turer life. 

" And this suggests another grave objection to the theory of 
the address ; namely, that it presupposes the possibility of a 
harmless return from spirituality to ritualism. That symbols 
have done much to develop ideas, that types have had a 
blessed mission in helping to bring forth spiritual conceptions, 
and to lead them through adolescence into maturity, is a fact 
too obvious to be denied. But to suppose that ideas that have 
once sloughed off their skins can be made to crawl back into 
them and still maintain a healthy life is quite another matter. 
It is to imagine that manhood can return to the swaddling- 
bands of infancy— that the church can leave the more ' stately 
mansions ' into which, by discipline and training, by reforma- 
tions and revolutions, Providence has brought her, and crouch 
down again into her ' low-vaulted past.* . . . 

" Since episcopalism professes to regard the Romish Church 
as corrupt and degenerate, the inference is that they hold it 
to be only a medium of communication, and not in any sense 
a vital part of the succession. So that, within its decay and 









THE YOUNG MINISTER 57 

corruption, the germ of the true organic unity has been pre- 
served, wrapped up, like the Egyptian wheat, in the swathes 
of the mummy, waiting for Providence to bring about the 
necessary conditions for its growth and development. This 
theory seems certainly to be philosophical, perfectly consistent 
with the analogies of history. 

"But the hypothesis being once admitted, why cannot 
those denominations which have sprung from the Episcopal 
Church, and which charge that church with being a perversion, 
rise up and claim that they have been derived from the true 
germ— the germ of which episcopacy was the repository — and 
hence that they have the only true succession? What then 
becomes of the claims of the churchman? If, by a legitimate 
process of exogenous growth, they who once constituted the 
heart of Christianity find themselves pushed outward to its ex- 
terior, into the bark and tegument of mere formalism, surely 
they cannot complain that there is anything anomalous in the 
position of those who have supplanted them. Least of all can 
they with good grace press their own claim of still constituting 
the pith and marrow of the church. 

" And the Scripture argument for any such succession of the 
priesthood is still more unsatisfactory. It impresses one as 
almost unparalleled in the annals of forced interpretation, two 
or three texts being made to bear up the whole superstructure 
of argument against hundreds whose genius is most obviously 
opposed to it. Nine parts of conclusion are found to every 
one part of premise, reminding us most forcibly of Coleridge's 
description of such interpretations as - smoke-like wreaths of in- 
ference/ or an ' ever- widening spiral ergo from the narrow aper- 
ture of perhaps a single text.' 

" The boon, therefore, which is offered us in organic unity 
as here defined has, we are constrained to say, no special value 
to us, because we cannot appreciate our need of it. 



58 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

" We see no necessity of drawing the life which we receive 
from Christ through a channel so long and tortuous that to 
explore it is an impossible task, or of tracing our descent from 
his apostles through a lineage so obscure that we cannot tell 
whether we are sons or bastards. We believe in a Christ as 
the Head of the church, who lives and reigns forever, who 
not only holds his mysterious union with his church still un- 
broken, but constantly energizes and reinforces that church 
by fresh infusions of his life ; so that the vitality of the chil- 
dren does not depend upon the vitality of their ancestors. 
We believe his union with his church is direct, not mediate — 
a union of incorporation, not of remote connection. And 
hence it matters little whether we are connected with the origi- 
nal branches of the True Vine, so long as that Vine is capable 
of thrusting out fresh shoots alike for the church and for its 
ministry. 

" For any one of the coordinate branches of the church, there- 
fore, to attempt to bring about unity by setting forth its own 
pattern and polity as the one to be conformed to, exactly or 
approximately, by all, will necessarily be of little use. No 
sectarian plea against sectarianism, no partizan tirade against 
religious partizanship, will avail. But whatever brings the 
church into nearer accordance with the spirit of Christ and 
his gospel, whatever exalts the central and centralizing truths 
of our common faith, will do most toward promoting that unity 
for which we all hope and pray. In the beautiful words of 
the author of ' The Patience of Hope/ ' The bosom of Christ 
is the grave, the only grave, of religious acrimony ; we learn 
secrets there which render it possible for us to be of one heart, 
if we may not yet be of one mind, with all who lean upon it 
with us. For, slightly as we may think to heal long-festering 
hurts, there is no cure for religious dissension except that of 
spiritual acquaintance with God, as revealed to us in the mind 
and spirit of Christ Jesus. To acquaint ourselves thus with 






THE YOUNG MINISTER 59 

God is to be at peace, for it is to learn how far more strong 
than all which separates is that which unites us in him. So 
long as the external is more to us than the vital, the acciden- 
tal dearer than the essential, so long as we are more church- 
men, more Protestants, more anything than Christians, religious 
acerbity will continue.' " 



CHAPTER IV 



A STONY FIELD 



Difficulties of the Boston field— The periodic season of unbelief— 
Unitarian-transcendentalism— Sluggish religious life of the Claren- 
don Street Church. 

THREE things combined to give the field of work upon 
which Gordon had now entered a character of excep- 
tional difficulty : the general current of doubt at that time pre- 
vailing in educated circles here and abroad, the local Unitarian- 
transcendental movement, then at the height of its prosperity, 
and the somewhat contracted spiritual life of the church to 
which he was now to minister. 



The epoch was Sadducean. Men were passing into that 
prison-house of which, for a whole generation, Mr. Herbert 
Spencer has held the keys. The Ancient of Days had been 
deposed in favor of the Unknowable. In matter the promise 
and potency of all things were to be sought and found. 
" Science," an o'ershadowing swash-buckler, defied all the 
opinions and generalizations which had until its day been 
maintained. Then were rung the changes on 

" Geology, ethnology, those little passing-bells 
That signify some faith's about to die." 

How seductively the chimes did peal — not in violent clangor, 
but with a charming melancholy as the old, beautiful, much- 
regretted, but hopelessly obsolete, beliefs were laid away to 
their long rest! A new anti-religious classification had arisen. 

60 



A STONY FIELD 6 1 

Men called themselves agnostics— a name of gentlemanly note, 
a pledge of culture, without the anarchic suggestions of un- 
veiled atheism. Those were the days when the educated mob 
ridiculed the belief in a purposing, sovereign Maker. Tele- 
ology, that ancient prop of faith, was, they thought, being un- 
dermined and destroyed completely and for all time by the 
great Darwin, as he studied his earthworms and rock-pigeons. 
We know now that he was digging, though unconsciously, 
but to lay the foundations deeper ; for Darwinism, which was 
to be the very escarpment of Doubting Castle, has proved in 
the end a buttress to the house of the Lord God. The evo- 
lution theory had its foundations in eternal verities. The 
deductions and misapplications and perverse generalizations 
which it fathered are alone false and frivolous. 



ii 

Quite the contrary, however, was it with the local unbelief. 
Unitarian-transcendentalism was based upon a false psychol- 
ogy and upon a wholly non-ethical conception of history. 
The attitude of Unitarianism was and is distinctively negative. 
Denial has been its tradition from the days of Priestley down 
to the present hour. In earlier years it was busy in controvert- 
ing bald statements concerning the nature of the Godhead. 
It was profoundly convinced that three could never be one, 
and was content to do battle with this alleged superstition. 
In the present era of paradoxical marvels, of matter-penetrat- 
ing rays, and of mysterious fourth dimensions, its peculiar 
contention has not the support in antecedent improbability 
which it once might have seemed to have. The old watch- 
cry, accordingly, attracts little interest or attention. 

Its negative positions have been modified to a great extent 
by the positive theory of " transcendentalism " which has 
flowed along, in greater or less confusion and intermixture, 



62 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

beside and within it. This revival of Gnosticism found its 
coryphaeus in Emerson, whose influence in New England was 
due primarily to the fact that he first introduced to his country- 
men, cut off from the intellectual life of Europe, and shut up 
to a rather dry and formal type of religion, the fermenting 
systems, the neologies and ideologies of Germany. He was 
the first to travel in the realms of gold, a naive Marco Polo, 
first to break from the provincial life of old Massachusetts. 
His ship before all others brought over the strange fruits which 
now come daily and by steamer-load. We of the present for- 
get that ship and its burden of novelties. No longer does 
the " seer " fill the whole sky like a new angel standing in the 
sun. He seems, on the contrary, a gentle mystagogue with a 
somewhat superficial culture, who unduly exaggerated the im- 
portance of the systems of Fichte and Jacobi, and who had 
not, alas ! even the shadow of an idea of the evil that ravages 
this earth. 

Amiel says that " the best measure of the profundity of any 
religious doctrine is given by its conception of sin and of the 
cure of sin." Judged by this test, Emersonian " transcen- 
dentalism " would be hardly important enough to command 
serious consideration. Yet, if it has no philosophical signifi- 
cance, it has had a place too baleful in the life of New Eng- 
land to be passed over. 

" Transcendentalism/' a modification and perverted expres- 
sion of the theory of subjective idealism, makes of man a crea- 
tor.* Of course, therefore, it cannot concede him to be a 
rascal. The logic of idealism is indeed undeniable ; yet, after 
all, it remains as unbelievable as it is irrefutable. The " tran- 
scendentalist " induction from it as to man's moral make-up, 
however, is, when brought to the touchstone of history and of 
daily experience, both unbelievable and refutable. " It as- 

* O. B. Frothingham, "Transcendentalism in New England," pp. 
202, 119, et passim. 



A STONY FIELD 63 

serts," to quote the word of its historian, "the inalienable 
worth of man," " It claims for all men what Christianity 
claims for its own elect." " It regards the inner light which 
Quakerism attributes to the supernatural illumination of the 
Holy Spirit as the natural endowment of the human mind." 
In short, it inverts the order of the Christian revelation in its 
estimate of humanity and of Christianity, making of the latter 
an illustrious example and fruit of the greatness of man instead 
of a resource for the repair of human shortcoming, and find- 
ing in Jesus a notable type of human nature, of which type 
we all partake by birthright without reference to repentance 
or to divine renewal. It teaches the essential goodness of 
man, and the indefinite perfectibility of society. 

This unwillingness to acknowledge the corruption of the 
human heart was the essential feature of " transcendental " 
ethics. " Never wrong people with your contritions, nor with 
dismal views of society," Emerson used to say. Like his own 
humble-bee, he was capable of 

" Seeing only what is fair, 
Sipping only what is sweet," 

and the result was a serenity of mind hardly bought at the ex- 
pense of a complete ignorance of the bitter, wisdom-bringing 
tragedies of life. " That horrid burden and impediment on 
the soul which the churches call sin," as well as " the courses 
of nature and the prodigious injustices of man in society, 
affected him with neither horror nor awe." * To him as to his 
fellows, the minor prophets of unbelief — the Alcotts, the Rip- 
leys, the Parkers — the world was one rose-garden, the mono- 
tone of whose loveliness is disturbed by neither thorn nor 
hidden snake. They ignored " that sin which circulates in 
our bodies as blood." They forgot that " savage, brigand, 
and madman each of us harbors, in repose or manacled, but 

* " Emerson," by Mr. John Morley. 



64 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

always living, in the recesses of his own heart." * And as 
the natural and inevitable corollary of this superficial and 
false estimate of the place of evil in man's economy, there fol- 
lowed a low and inadequate conception of holiness. 

Of course such views attained great popularity with those 
tired of two hundred years of honest Puritanism. Theodore 
Parker, after recounting the many theories to which the men 
of his day attributed his success, said, " The real thing they 
did not seem to hit was that I preached an idea of God, of 
man, and of religion which commended itself to the nature of 
mankind." t Sure enough. It is indeed cheering to "the 
natural man " to be told, for instance, that " sin has no more 
existence than the phlogiston which was premised to explain 
combustion," % and to hear all reference to it branded as 
" damaged phraseology, tainted with infamous notions of God 
and man." % And if, perchance, mention must be made of the 
petty errors, the venial omissions, the occasional peccadillos, 
which now and then force themselves on our attention, what 
more soothing and reassuring than to be told that such slips 
"are but the incidents of our attempt to get command over 
our faculties"; § that, "just as children in learning to write 
mistake letters, miscall words, and miswrite phrases," so we, 
by " these experiments which fail, learn self-command." 

Such was the lavender-water theology preached for a whole 
generation by this priest of " transcendentalism." It was a 
theology, too, which was as full of opposition to Christianity 
as it was weak and irrational. What can be said of a man 
who could speak of the communion-table in this way : 

" On what terms shall a person be allowed once a month in 

* Taine, " Ancien Regime." Cf. the whole destructively critical 
treatment of the kindred views of J. J. Rousseau. 

t Quoted in Frothingham's " Transcendentalism," p. 312. 

\ " Theodore Parker's Life and Letters," vol. i., pp. 151, 152. 

} Ibid., vol. i., pp. 400, 401, 149, 150. 



A STONY FIELD 65 

a meeting-house on Sunday to eat a crumb of baker's bread 
and drink a sip of grocer's wine, which the deacon has bought 
at a shop the day before? The Lord's Supper as now ad- 
ministered is a heathenish rite, and means very little." * 

Does not " liberalism" reach in such utterances its nadir? 
Does it not become the bare synonym for an indecent folly 
and hatred, comparable only to the bitterest, most raucous, 
hate-inspired antichristianity of Buchner or of Anacharsis 
Clootz? Yet this fanatic is even now spoken of currently by 
Unitarians as St. Theodore. 

The refusal to recognize realities, and especially the most 
terrible of all realities, has been punished in our day by a 
comic mania for follies, which is a distinguishing feature of 
present-day Boston life.t This tendency is directly traceable 
to the early " transcendentalists." Any one who turns over the 
files of the " Dial " will find there the seed-corn of almost all 
the intellectual hallucinations which have here flourished. He 
will find there that headlong and unsophisticated enthusiasm, 
that undiscriminating, open-armed acceptance of new things, 
and that contemptuous rejection of what had been the milk 
of life, the source of vigor and of pristine strength. He can 
there run up and down the whole gamut of the now familiar 
" liberal slang," the wearisome phrases about ethnic religions, 
salvation by character, the bigotry of creeds, narrow literalism, 
and those peculiarly Emersonian classifications in which Jesus, 

* " Theodore Parker's Life and Letters," vol. i., p. 322. He recom- 
mends as a substitute, we believe, the coming together in a parlor and 
eating, if one likes, curds and cream and baked apples. 

t One recalls Heine's quatrain (the unquestioned sovereignty of 
dreamland seems to have passed from German to New England hands) : 

" Franzosen und Russen gehort das Land, 
Das Meer gehort den Britten ; 
Wir aber fiihren im Luftreich des Traums 
Die Herrschaft unbestritten." 



66 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Socrates, and Buddha are coupled in a patronizing impartiality. 
He will find the mystically meaningless utterances of Bronson 
Alcott, those Orphic sayings about " the poles of things which 
are not integrated," " the intertwining of the divine Gemini," 
and " the love w r hich globes and the wisdom which orbs all 
things." 

The manifestations of this spirit of eccentric novelty-hunt- 
ing have been endless in number and variety. For years it 
found its most acute exhibition in the summer meetings of 
wayward " philosophers " at Concord. It has broken out in 
manifold scrofulous vagaries, such as spiritualism, Christian 
Science, theosophy, and esotericism. Indeed, as Pascal said, 
"it is the incredulous who are most credulous, the skeptical 
who are most surely and easily duped." A French epicure 
contended that the discoverer of a new dish is a greater bene- 
factor than he who announces a new planet swimming w r ithin 
his ken. In like manner does this community estimate spiritual 
things. Any new fantastic religious importation from Asia 
precedes in popular interest the weightier matters of the law 
and of judgment. 

We can trace this strange malady, this restless mania for 
the unusual, to that tendency in the " transcendentalist " teach, 
ing which destroys clean-cut distinctions, which, from its al- 
leged absolute point of view, finds all religions good, and 
obscures in every sphere of life all that most men would call 
evil. We are able, on the other hand, to trace that icily crit- 
ical temper which characterizes Cambridge and Boston — that 
unresponsiveness, that insensitive, stony, unsympathetic spirit 
which no man who stops overnight in the intellectual hostelries 
of Massachusetts fails to perceive or succeeds in forgetting — 
to the Unitarianism which was born struggling against its 
mother, Puritan orthodoxy, and which has spent its mature 
years as a permanent party of opposition. 

As Emerson represents the first tendency, so Dr. Holmes, in 



A STONY FIELD 67 

his religious phase, might, in spite of his sunny geniality, stand 
for the second. Here we have full culture, the kindly spirit, the 
enlightened humanism. But there is also a tartrate of acrimony 
in his mental reaction, which the slightest suggestion of Calvin- 
ism immediately precipitates. One drop, and the limpid soul 
is discolored as a hogshead of water into which falls one ten- 
thousandth of a grain of cochineal. To the New England 
Unitarian, Calvinism is as an August thunder-storm. It sours 
in his breast the milk of human kindness. We confess it is 
black, foreboding; that its locks threaten, that its shafts are 
terrible in their majesty. Yet it waters the thirsty fields, and 
has (history will bear us out) blessed every land which has lain 
across its track, even though it has turned the cream in the 
dairies of unbelief. 

The attempts made by those of this connection to engage 
in work which is usually considered religious have been, on 
the whole, unimportant. Slight, too, have been the efforts 
put forth by them to reach the destitute, ignorant, helpless 
masses of the American cities. No missionaries have gone 
from their midst to preach even the " ethics " of Jesus to the 
gloomy heathenism of Asia and Africa. Their whole propa- 
ganda has been one of disintegration among evangelical Chris- 
tians, and their favorite occupation has been that of lashing 
the dead lion of Calvinism. Parker, Holmes, Higginson, 
F. E. Abbott, Bartol, Clarke, and the whole Unitarian pul- 
pit have busied themselves in conjuring up a nightmare, in 
which Edwards has played the part of chief ogre, and in which 
Norton, Cotton Mather, and the fathers of New England 
Puritanism have been made to act as the terrible and ghastly 
supernumeraries ; predestination, hell-fire, and original sin being 
their gruesome stage properties. 

Ah, well! we may be forgiven when we hear this outcry 
against that sweet soul, that massive intellect, that Doctor 
Angelicus, Jonathan Edwards, if we recall a remark of Heine's 



68 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

anent the romanticist detractors of Luther. " The ape on the 
giant's shoulders sees farther than the man on the ground," he 
says. We may, from the height of two later centuries, have 
wider outlooks and a clearer vision, but let us not dare to 
measure ourselves against the men below. 

We have traced cursorily the influence and tendency of the 
Unitarian-transcendental movement. This influence was 
deepened and strengthened by the brilliant place which the 
leaders in these opinions attained in the contemporary litera- 
ture. It was a season of unparalleled efflorescence in the in- 
tellectual life of New England. The prestige of this flowering 
time, of this season of admirable productivity in poetry and 
pure literature, naturally accrued, in a greater or less degree, 
to the party of religious revolt and of philosophical vagary. 

Their authority was strengthened, too, by the noble part 
which as a body they played in the antislavery movement. 
One can hardly doubt that the devouring indignation against 
the slavocracy which possessed the soul of Theodore Parker 
did more to commend to serious people the interpretation of 
Christianity set forth by him each Sunday in Music Hall than a 
critical and sympathetic study of the New Testament possibly 
could. Yet the historian of that period and of the ideas then 
current will not be likely to fall into the mistake of supposing 
that the activity in reform noticeable in the careers of Parker, 
of Lowell, of Samuel May, and of other New England Uni- 
tarians, had its spring in the negations of Unitarianism, 
much less in the essentially unmoral and confused ethics of 
" transcendentalism." This would be to suppose that the lily 
blooming in the midst of a tangled mass of weeds grows actu- 
ally upon one of the weed stalks. No reasonable man will 
forget that these were the children of the Puritanism which 
they assaulted, that Emerson, for example, was by birth the 
eighth in a series of Puritan ministers. That their moral 
courage and piety were largely exotic, we now know who com- 



A STONY FIELD 69 

pare the work of Unitarianism, in the purely humanitarian lines 
which it preaches, with that of such strange, bizarre, yet es- 
sentially evangelical agencies as the Salvation Army. We are 
not unfaithful to the truth in asserting that the advantage lies 
altogether with those who are without the social prestige, the 
wealth, the great traditions, but who are empowered by the 
very Spirit of God. 

A community dominated by a party of this sort, full of pride 
in its career of unbelief, full of bitterness against its oppo- 
nents, ever assaulting and aspersing and pelting with catchwords 
those who still preached the gospel in its fullness, was not by 
any means an easy place in which to undertake religious work. 
The infiltration from above of this weak rationalism, of this 
insipid humanity-worship, among the thoughtless newspaper- 
reading elements in the community popularized, while dilut- 
ing, the current opinions. A pastor visiting among people 
would find everywhere the objections to the revelation of God 
in Christ which Cambridge and Boston made, only stripped 
of the glitter, the garnish, the attractiveness with which the 
educated had clothed them. Thus among all classes the tend- 
encies were, to a great extent, away from evangelical Chris- 
tianity. The tide was running out fast. Only strong men 
could stand on their feet and resist its flow. 



in 

The church which Gordon was entering for a quarter-cen- 
tury's incessant work was, from some points of view, the most 
important of the denomination in Boston. It was a "family " 
church of an approved type, somewhat exclusive, with a gen- 
erous sprinkling of rich men in its pews. It was a church in 
which the line of separation between the Haves and the Have- 
nots, so fatal to the best type of church development, was 
defined with more or less conscientiousness. The optimates. 



70 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

the " nice " people, the " best " people, were distinctly in 
evidence. A line of substantial merchants and bankers ran 
up and down the ends of the most desirable pews. If you 
had gone in any Sunday morning, you would have seen well- 
dressed ladies and gentlemen, singly or in groups, passing 
down the center aisles to their seats. The more common folk 
in the fringe of gallery and rear seats were, as befits the outer 
edge of a parterre, in more subdued dress. Numerous car- 
riages at the doors lent a pleasant suggestion of capitalism to 
the exterior of the church. 

The choir-loft was "a nest of singing-birds/ ' One of 
the foremost American organists sat at the keyboard of the 
great new instrument. The music was faultless and severely 
classical. The preludes of Baptiste, the offertories of Barnby, 
the rapturous anthems of Stainer and of Berthold Tours, seem 
indissolubly connected with those old, cold, correct, formal 
days of fashionable Clarendon Street. 

It was indeed a church of a well-defined and easily recog- 
nized type — a church which has its counterpart in every city 
of Protestant Christendom. It summarized, as all of its class, 
the admirable traits of Protestantism — comfort, order, intelli- 
gence, affluence, reserve, a not too aggressive religiousness. 
A church of this sort may be called the Church of the Disci- 
ples, the Church of the Covenanters, the Church of the Pil- 
grims. A more nearly correct and more modernized sobriquet 
would be, perhaps, the Church of the Bank Presidents. And 
why not? Do we Americans not believe that Montecucculi's 
three conditions for the prosecution of successful warfare— 
first, money; second, money; third, money — are alone indis- 
pensable in every other form of activity, social, commercial, 
religious? 

This was the apprehension, evidently, of many who attended 
the church in Clarendon Street during the early seventies. 
The feeling of exclusiveness congealed finally into a condition 



A STONY FIELD 71 

of things akin in some degree to that prevailing in close cor- 
porations with elected membership. An officer of the church 
was rebuked by one of the deacons for attaching the words 
" strangers welcome " to some circulars for public distribution. 
The theory which prevailed, apparently, was that which, in 
the field of economics, goes under the name of Gresham's 
Law. Base metal will drive out better currency ; people of 
humble social status will scare away the more " desirable" 
families. The result may easily be imagined. 

The severely facetious title of "The Saints' Everlasting 
Rest," commonly applied to the church by outsiders, was 
perhaps not altogether undeserved. 

Years after, the young man who was now entering on his 
pastorate here wrote of just such churches : " Ecclesiastical 
corpses lie all about us. The caskets in which they repose 
are lined with satin ; they are decorated with solid silver 
handles and with abundant flowers, and, like other caskets, 
they are just large enough for their occupants, with no room 
for strangers. These churches have died of respectability 
and are embalmed in complacency." His own church was 
not, however, beyond resuscitation. For years he worked on 
it, turned it over and over, smote it mercifully severe blows, 
rubbed it back and forth, refused to listen to its protests, to 
its demand that it might be left to die in peace. And his 
reward was to see it, in his own closing days, the ruddiest, 
healthiest church in the city, bending all its strength for the 
salvation of others. 

In 1890, reviewing his twenty years' pastorate, Dr. Gordon 
remarked : 

" We believe we have learned much, through divine teach- 
ing, as to the true method of conducting the affairs of God's 
church ; have proved by experience the practicability of what 
we have learned ; and have largely united the church in the 
practice thereof. Innovations have from the beginning been 



72 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

strongly urged. f Innovations ' ? No ! that word implies new- 
ness ; and God is our witness that in theology, in worship, and 
in church administration it is not the new to which we have 
been inclined, but the old. Renovation, rather, is what we 
have sought. With a deep feeling that many of the usages 
which have been fastened upon our churches by long tradition 
constitute a serious barrier to spiritual success, it has been my 
steady aim to remove these. In general, we may say, it is our 
strong conviction that true success in the church of Christ is 
to be attained by spiritual, not by secular, methods ; by a wor- 
ship which promotes self-denial in God's people, and not by 
that which ministers to self-gratification; by a cultivation of 
the heart through diligent use of the Word and of prayer, and 
not by a cultivation of art through music and architecture and 
ritual. And wi h the most deliberate emphasis we can say 
that every step in our return to simpler and more scriptural 
methods of church service has proved an onward step toward 
spiritual efficiency and success." 

His whole ministry, then, faced backward— away from the 
pitiable modern devices and schemes and substitutes, to " that 
higher, holier, earlier, purer church," from which we are ever 
departing, and to which we must ever return if we are to live. 



CHAPTER V 

FOR SPIRITUAL WORSHIP 

The true aim of a church — Congregational singing—" The Service of 
Song" — Extracts from sermons on the worship of the church— The 
consummation of this reform 

AS the reforms which reclaimed this church extended over 
il many years, we shall be obliged to treat them in order 
as they were suggested and consummated. The idea of a 
church which must be first developed is that of a hospital. 
It is properly, to use the old English phrase, a "cure" for 
souls. This conception, so alien to the early life of Clarendon 
Street, was one of the best fruits of the Moody meetings of 
'77, held in the immediate vicinity. The entrance of reformed 
drunkards, and of all types of publicans and sinners, into 
membership opened the way for a progressive democratization 
culminating in the free-church system. Again, with the agita- 
tion for world-wide missions the next most important function 
of a local church began to be emphasized ; namely, that of 
entrepot and recruiting-station for the collection of munition 
and the enlistment of recruits for foreign service. How well 
the duties along this line came to be fulfilled we shall see 
further on. The reform which claimed the earliest attention 
of the new pastor, however, was in the worship of the church. 
For these changes he prayed and worked incessantly. Dur- 
ing fifteen years preconceived opinions and prejudices stood 
out against his patient efforts; then they gave way, to his 
great joy and to the general satisfaction. 

73 



74 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

For long years Dr. Gordon's unwavering advocacy of con- 
gregational music seemed to his people an unaccountable eccen- 
tricity, the one hobby from which he never would dismount. 
"Is it not necessary," they used to say, "for the success of 
any well-ordered church that the choir should be of the most 
select and well-trained sort ? " The outside world, so ran 
their theory, must be drawn inside the church walls by the 
sound of voluntary and anthem. When within, the preacher 
has his opportunity. Why should a sportsman throw away 
his decoy-ducks? Why should a pastor attempt to operate 
without the aids which his people furnish freely for the further- 
ance of his work? 

Such was the argument, with all the collateral pleas for 
high musical standards in a church of its rank. It was for- 
gotten that the only condition which the new minister had 
made in accepting this charge was the disuse of what he 
called the ice-chest, i.e., the quartet gallery, and the substitu- 
tion of hearty singing by the whole congregation for the dele- 
gated worship there carried on. 

In these days of substantial hymnaries, not to speak of the 
endlessly issued gospel hymns — hymns which in the morning 
spring up and flourish, and in the evening are cut down and 
wither — congregational singing seems a perfectly natural 
institution. A generation ago, however, the prevailing hymn- 
books were of such a dry, jejune, characterless description 
that the wonder is men and women ever sang at all. It was 
an era of lugubrious tunes, of which " China," " Devizes," and 
" Kentucky " are fairly representative. Lowell Mason still 
ruled with autocratic sway over church collections. The 
obvious thing, accordingly, for any one who wanted to encour- 
age general participation in worship was, first of all, to furnish 
an acceptable, thoroughly modern collection of hymns and 
tunes. This Gordon attempted to do. The "Service of 
Song," which he edited with much labor and evident taste, 



FOR SPIRITUAL WORSHIP 75 

became for many years a standard hymnal for Baptist 
churches, and was the text-book from which he first taught 
his own people to sing. 

The next thing was to instruct his people in their plain 
duties in the worship of the church. This was done admirably 
in a series of sermons. The whole subject in all its features 
— singing, responsive reading, giving, and "the ministry of 
silence" — was discussed with acuteness and fervid scriptural- 
ness. To give an idea of his purpose, and of his conception 
of what a service should be in a church with the New Testa- 
ment motive, the following extracts from these sermons are 
introduced : 

" We are of the conviction that we have been tending en- 
tirely in the direction of ritualism (in its essential error of sub- 
stituting priest for people) in allowing our praise to be rendered 
vicariously by quartet choirs, and our praying to be done 
largely for us by the minister instead of joining in it our- 
selves. . . . 

"There are two classes of offenders in this matter of the 
worship of song : those who, having a good voice, do not sing 
with the heart, and those who, having a good heart, do not 
sing with the voice ; and the latter is not the kast culpable. 
For one who loves God and adores Jesus Christ to sit silent 
when their praises are sung, keeping time to the melody only 
with the muffled beating of the heart, ought to be considered 
almost an affront to the Most High. . . . 

" How the expression, ' sacrifice of praise/ strikes at the 
idea of mere self-indulgence in the service of song! How it 
stamps with the brand of sacrilege our modern habit of regal- 
ing our ears with choice dainties of musical performance, and 
calling it worship! To whom was the sacrifice offered of 
old, to the people or to God? I need not answer the ques- 
tion. To whom is the sacrifice of praise presented in many 
of our modern sanctuaries? To the people, if the truth is 



T6 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

told. It is fitted up to satisfy their taste, the incense of its 
melody wafted toward their ears. It finds its end in minister- 
ing to their pleasure. They sit down and listen to it exactly 
as though its whole aim were their delectation. . . . 

" God would not have been pleased if the Israelite had 
gone to his neighbor's flock for a lamb because, forsooth, he 
might find one there that was whiter and more comely. And 
neither will Christ be pleased now if we borrow another's 
voice to utter our praises for his redeeming love, however 
exquisite and beautiful that voice may be. The offering must 
be taken out of the flock which he purchased with his own 
blood. Let us offer the sacrifice of praise ; that is, the fruit 
of our lips. . . . 

u You have noticed the fountains on the Common, with 
the water running so noiselessly through iron lips, which can 
neither taste its sweetness nor be refreshed by its coolness. 
And every Lord's day, in some of our churches, the most 
limpid strains of melody flow through lips that are just as 
oblivious to their import and just as unaffected by their sen- 
timent as those lips of iron. How many times are the words, 
' Come, Holy Spirit/ sung with no sense of longing for the 
blessed Comforter, with no apprehension of his holy mission, 
with no belief, indeed, in his divine personality! And what 
more direct and obvious method of violating the command- 
ment, ' Grieve not the Holy Spirit,' is possible than this? . . . 

" Men, like coals, kindle best in the mass. Each serves as 
a radiator to throw heat upon his neighbor, and so the zeal of 
the whole is quickly raised. But let each worshiper be only 
a dull absorbent of the warmth that is thrown upon him from 
Scripture, sermon, prayer, and hymn, and the preacher will 
find it a very onerous task to get the people into a devotional 
frame. Now singing is a means of spiritual radiation ; truth 
and love and fervor are easily contagious when it is the me- 
dium of intercourse. What minister cannot feel the difference 



FOR SPIRITUAL WORSHIP 77 

in the touch of a congregation that has risen just before the 
sermon and poured itself out in an inspiring and hearty hymn 
of praise, from that of a religious audience that has been quietly 
sitting and listening to a musical performance? There is a 
kind of spiritual elasticity in the former case which gives the 
preacher's words back to him in a responsive echo very differ- 
ent from that dull thud which comes from dropping a sermon 
into a listless and silent company of hearers. . . . 

" To know by subtle intuition when you pray that faithful 
souls are pressing round you, to second your desires and swell 
the volume of your intercessions, is a blessed thing ; but to 
be assured of this by the audible response of a multitude of 
voices is wonderfully strengthening. Yet from the unhappy 
custom — a custom that bears the stamp of an easy undevout- 
ness — into which worshipers have so largely fallen, of listen- 
ing to the public supplications instead of joining in them, how 
often is the minister compelled to say to himself, after strug- 
gling in the pangs of unattended prayer, ' I have trodden the 
wine-press alone; and of the people there was none with 
me'! . . . 

" Hear the summons to prayer which is given in the Epistle 
to the Hebrews : ' Brethren, let us draw near.' ... It is not, 
' Let me draw near in your behalf, as your minister and mouth- 
piece ;' but, 'Let us draw near.' Of course the summons 
ought to be the same to-day, since the priesthood of believers 
in Christ is an unchangeable priesthood. Now, if the people 
simply sit still in their places during this exercise, without a 
single change of attitude, without a gesture of reverence, 
without an utterance of the voice, without a single according 
' Amen ' at the end, do they not look more like Jews waiting 
without than like purged Christian worshipers entering in 
before the throne of grace? And when the pastor stands up 
alone without a sound or token of attendance with him on 
the part of the flock, and shuts his eyes and so draws the cur- 



78 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

tain between himself and the congregation, and enters into 
solitude while he pleads with God — the first salutation that 
greets him on his return being the subdued strains of the 
organ — does he not look too much like the high priest enter- 
ing within the veil, and ministering by himself till the tinkling 
of the sacred bells announces his return to the waiting con- 
gregation? . . . 

" Whether it be true or not physically, as has been asserted, 
that the striking and collision of sounds in the atmosphere 
can generate electricity, the spiritual fact is unquestionable. 
There is a marvelous magnetism in the blending and colliding 
of a multitude of voices in a great congregation. Nothing 
can compare with it as an incitement to religious enthusiasm ; 
nothing can take its place as a means of stirring and main- 
taining a universal interest in public services. Now concerted 
reading is the simplest form of vocal worship. Some may 
complain that they have not the voice for singing, and others 
that they have not the training to follow the simplest melody 
of music ; but none but the dumb or utterly unlettered can 
say that they cannot join in the audible reading of the Psalms. 
Here, then, is an exercise, scriptural and primitive in its char- 
acter, that can enlist every worshiper, that can draw in every 
voice in the assembly to swell and deepen the current of de- 
votion. . . . 

" I know all that can be said of the danger of formality in 
our Lord's day worship ; but formality belongs no more to 
thoughtless utterance than to thoughtless repression, to vain 
repetition than to vain silence. Indeed, the constant peril of 
non-participation in religious worship is that indecorous in- 
attention, that worst kind of formalism, may become habit- 
ual. . . . 

" We have never been more sensibly impressed than by a 
half-hour's still meditation around the table of the Lord. 
There are not only thoughts in us too deep for utterance, but 



FOR SPIRITUAL WORSHIP 79 

thoughts which are repressed and drowned by another's utter- 
ance. ' To everything there is a season,' says the Preacher, 
1 and a time to every purpose under heaven '—'a time to keep 
silence, and a time to speak.' So then, while we are seeking 
for ministers who have a great gift for speaking, commend 
us also to those of whom it can be said, as of a famous 
Frenchman, that they have a great talent for silence. Even 
in the ordinance of worship, which is especially for preaching 
and prayer, we have often wished that we could make greater 
use of the ministry of silence. But the organ and choir are 
great, and they have prevailed. We have no sooner uttered 
our ' Amen ' than there comes a response ; it may be from the 
organ, or from the quartet, but we confess it always seems in- 
trusive and distracting. It takes the thoughts away from 
what has been said, appeals to our musical taste, if we have 
any, setting us either to admiring or criticizing, or, if we have 
no music in our souls, makes us impatient. ' A response ' ? 
Yes ; but we were praying to God, and wanted a moment of 
stillness to see if we could not hear a response from the 
throne. We had been shutting our eyes that we might thereby 
the more completely shut ourselves in with God ; we had been 
turning our ears away from earth's distracting noises that we 
might open them to the Lord, and were saying, 'Speak, Lord ; 
for thy servant heareth;' and before we have had time to 
hear the divine voice in our soul, the vox hum ana stop has 
broken in upon us, and music, with its voluptuous swell, has 
rushed into the place where we were carrying on the sacrifice 
of praise. 

" A full minute of silence after prayer, of absolute congre- 
gational stillness — we have enjoyed it in one or two churches 
where we have worshiped, and have never forgotten the im- 
pression. ' Be still, and know that I am God.' When shall 
we learn that God is not in the wind of an organ-bellows, or 
in the fire of exciting halleluiahs, but in the still, small voice? 



80 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

And then, after the sermon, is apt to come another burst of 
violence against the kingdom of silence. If perchance the 
Spirit has helped us to make a serious impression upon our 
hearers, we wish so much that we could send them away with 
nothing to disturb that impression. But alas! who has not 
heard it? The organ with all its stops breaks out, like many 
bulls of Bashan. The seed of the Word has been sown, but 
cannot be let alone. A wild flock of quavers burst their cage 
in the organ-loft, and, like birds of the air, alight upon the 
hearers to catch away that which was sown in the heart. Who 
that has been present does not remember the gracious silence 
with which the sermon in Mr. Spurgeon's tabernacle closes? 
The people go away with the word of warning and exhorta- 
tion and hope as the last sound that fell upon their hearts. 
They march out to the muffled beatings of a conscience ac- 
cusing or else excusing, not to the tripping music of an organ. 
Oh, the power of silence !" 

The fruits of this teaching were not yet. The preacher had 
turned the dry turf over, and thrown the seed of better things 
into the furrow. But years of instruction and of waiting passed 
before the important change in church worship which he 
sought was consummated. For years music committees met 
and jangled and voted money and received meekly the gratu- 
itous criticisms of the church community. Quartet succeeded 
quartet like the passing birds of passing seasons. Gradually, 
however, opinions changed, and the pastor's plan became the 
people's policy. If one who had known the church in th e 
seventies should enter it in the nineties, what a transformation 
in its worship he would observe! What a volume of sound 
in the singing! How it fills the nooks and corners of the 
church, as the full, swollen tide fills with its back-water the 
creeks and inlets of the coast ! All are singing now, heartily, 
as unto the Lord, with an interested, worshipful spontaneity, 
very different from the lassitude of the old time, when to sit still 



FOR SPIRITUAL WORSHIP 81 

on the cushions and listen to trios from Mendelssohn or to 
the performance of fugues and contrapuntal etudes on the 
organ was the ideal of worship. God is not praised by the 
stagnant pool. But here the floods have lifted up their voice, 
and the languid congregational singing, with its omission of 
half the stanzas of the hymn, is now a thing of the past. To 
hear the counterpart of such singing you must go to the 
Lutheran churches of Prussia or Saxony, and listen to the 
common people as they sing the chorals of Paul Gerhardt. 



CHAPTER VI 



WHERE THE ROOTS FED 



"In Christ'' published— Private conferences for Bible study— Books 
which had a formative influence on Dr. Gordon's ministry — Contact 
with Brethrenism — The mission of this sect — In Europe, 1877 — Esti- 
mate of preachers heard abroad 

SOON after coming to Boston, Gordon published a remark- 
able study in the identities of Christ and the believer. "In 
Christ " was the fruit of much deep meditation, the distillation 
of many late hours in the Jamaica Plain manse. It is, per- 
haps, the most nearly perfect in form and content of any of 
his works, quintessential in its compression, rich, finished, and 
imbued with mysticism, the mysticism of the New Testament. 
Such pages as these A Kempis or the Friends of God might 
have written. How refreshing this profoundly penetrating 
interpretation after the shallow syncretisms and nonchalant 
denials of New England Unitarianism ! It stands out to one, 
working through the arid mass of the local religious literature 
of its day, like a green spot, with feathery palms and tinkling 
springs, in a choking expanse of unfruitful, limitless sand. 

The Pauline phrases, "created in Christ/' "crucified with 
Christ," "risen with Christ," "baptized into Christ," "sancti- 
fied in Christ," "the dead in Christ," are taken as melodic 
themes upon which to work out the variations of a sober, 
fruitful exposition. Unitarianism made of Christ a mere pat- 
tern. This volume exhibits him as an indwelling principle, 
incorporating itself in the believer and eradicating the old will, 

82 



WHERE THE ROOTS FED 83 

the old personality. Through its action the former life is 
doomed to drop off and disappear as a scab, beneath which 
the new, wholesome flesh is forming. There are accordingly 
two eras in the life of the Christian, The one Paul describes 
as the time " when we were in the flesh " ; the other is the 
true Anno Domini, the period of our life in Christ. 

The significant fact of this new epoch in our history is the 
presence of Christ in the heart. Without this, man cannot be 
joined to God any more than steel can be welded without the 
flux of borax. "We cannot be loved of God apart from 
Christ, for the divine approval can go out only to that which 
is worthy. Neither can we be condemned if we are in Christ, 
for the divine disapprobation can fall only upon what is sin- 
ful, and he is without sin." * In prayer our acceptance is 
determined by the same nexus. If Christ's will covers, inter- 
penetrates, and absorbs our will, there can be no conflict be- 
tween our prayer and the sovereign wishes of God. "We 
can come with boldness as being in him ' that liveth and was 
dead/ and, being 'dead with him/ we shall be careful to 
bring that only required sacrifice of the Christian covenant, a 
crucified will." t Thus Christ prays through us. 

Again, " since Christ and his attributes never part company, 
it is impossible to be made in him without being made into 
all that belongs to him." % Here is the earnest of our sancti- 
fication. But " though this grace is conferred on each Chris- 
tian as soon as he believes, it is nevertheless a gift held on 
deposit, 'hid with Christ in God/ to be drawn on through 
daily communion and gradual apprehension." § 

Finally, the affinities thus created by union with Christ se- 
cure to his own the immortality which is his. " They that 
sleep in Jesus " have that in them which will respond to the 
resurrection summons as steel filings to the sweep of the mag- 

* "In Christ," p. 119. t Ibid., p. 142. 

% Ibid., p. 168. § Ibid., p. 170. 



84 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

net above them. Then the identity of life with Christ will 
have been attained through an identity of experience. 

These first years in Boston were years of study and of 
spiritual exercise. Private conferences were held semi-monthly 
in Gordon's house for the consideration of the deeper themes 
of scriptural teaching. Associated with him in these studies 
were W. R. Nicholson, then rector of St. Paul's, and now 
bishop in the Reformed Episcopal Church, Mr. George C. 
Needham, Dr. H. M. Parsons, and others. The reading upon 
which he fed included such books as GurnalPs " Christian 
Armor," Charnock's " Wisdom of our Fathers," and the body 
of Puritan divinity generally. " It seems to me," he writes, 
" that the Puritan ministers held together both sides of the 
truth, and preserved their balance to a remarkable degree. 
They expounded most clearly the objective work of Christ, 
and they also unfolded his subjective work with a minuteness 
and a depth of insight quite beyond anything we witness in 
our day. They wrote thus clearly because they had appre- 
hended these things by a profound interior experience. What 
tide-marks do the diaries and meditations which these good 
men left furnish of the heights to which the Spirit's floods 
rose in their souls! We have a great lesson to learn of them 
concerning the culture of the inner life." 

Among other books of which he was especially fond were 
Van Oosterzee's " Person and Work of the Redeemer," Vinet's 
"Outlines of Theology," Alford's works, the "Horae Apoc- 
alypticae " of Elliott, Edersheim's " Sketches of Jewish Life," 
the journals of Eugenie de Gu6rin, Uhlhorn's " Conflict of 
Christianity with Paganism " ; the poems of Henry Vaughn, 
of Herbert, of Quarles, and of Donne ; the works of Rothe, of 
R. Stier, of Birks, of Flavel, of Archer Butler, of Westcott, of 
Guinness, of Harnack ; the lives of Joseph Alleine, of Robert 
Moffatt, of John Woolman, of Henry Martyn, and of David 
Brainerd. The career of the last named exerted a powerful 






WHERE THE ROOTS FED 85 

and lasting influence upon him. Years after, in describing a 
visit paid to Brainerd's grave, he writes : 

'' Does it savor of saint-worship or superstition to be thus 
exploring old graveyards, wading through snow-drifts, and 
deciphering ancient headstones on a cold day in midwinter? 
Perhaps so, on the face of it ; but let us justify our conduct. 
What if the writer confesses that he has never received such 
spiritual impulse from any other human being as from him whose 
body has lain now for nearly a century and a half under that 
Northampton slab? For many years an old and worn volume 
of his life and journals has lain upon my study table, and no 
season has passed without a renewed pondering of its precious 
contents. ' If you would make men think well of you, make 
them think well of themselves/ is the maxim of Lord Chester- 
field, which he regarded as embodying the highest worldly 
wisdom. On the contrary, the preacher and witness for 
Christ who makes us think meanly of ourselves is the one who 
does us most good, and ultimately wins our hearts. This is 
exactly the effect which the reading of Brainerd's memoirs 
has on one. Humiliation succeeds humiliation as we read 
on. ' How little have I prayed ! how low has been my 
standard of consecration ! ' is the irresistible exclamation; and 
when we shut the book we are not praising Brainerd, but con- 
demning ourselves, and resolving that, by the grace of God, 
we will follow Christ more closely in the future." 

We should not, in summing up the influences which shaped 
Dr. Gordon's religious and theological opinions, omit those re- 
sulting from his contact with Brethrenism. In an interesting 
survey of the religious upheavals of the century, he describes 
the two movements, Tractarianism and Brethrenism, which, 
emanating from a common source, have affected so power- 
fully, yet so differently, the Christian life of England. After 
noting the important places which universities have occupied 
in religious movements generally, and after contrasting the 



86 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

opposite courses which Darby, in Dublin University, and 
Newman, in Oxford, took in their revolt against the current 
religious apathy in the Church of England, he calls attention 
to the insignificant contributions which the Tractarian reac- 
tionaries have made to biblical interpretation, as compared 
with the extraordinary productivity of Brethrenism. The 
Tractarian party left two works of exegesis — Pusey's u Daniel 
and the Minor Prophets " and Keble's " Metrical Version of 
the Psalms" — which barely pass the line of mediocrity. 
" But if we turn to the other party," he continues, " we see a 
movement almost ultra-biblical, and a body of men almost 
ultra-apostolical in their style and manner of life and service. 
It gathered to itself a strong body of scholars, mostly from 
the pulpits of the Church of England, who began to pour out 
biblical literature in floods— exposition and textual criticism, 
lexicons and dictionaries for aiding in the study of the Bible, 
synopses of Scripture, tract leaflets, etc. The Christian world 
has been fairly inundated with these issues, and it may be 
doubted if any body of Christians ever sent forth such a mass 
and such a variety of biblical literature in the same length of 
time. 

" If we were to describe in a word the theological com- 
plexion of these writings, we should say that here we have high 
Calvinism, preaching free grace with a fullness and plainness 
never surpassed ; practising believers' baptism, and writing 
treatises on its symbolism rarely equaled for deep spiritual in- 
sight ; laying down a rule of life almost ascetic in its require- 
ment of separation from the world and surrender of earthly 
possessions for Christ's sake; and holding with primitive 
apostolic fervor to the personal, literal, and ever-imminent 
coming of Christ as the hope of the church. It is our opinion 
that the best writings of this body have furnished the text- 
books of modern evangelism, and largely determined its type 
of doctrine and preaching. Let us specify briefly. 






WHERE THE ROOTS FED 87 

"There is C. H. Mackintosh's 'Notes on Genesis,' 'Exo- 
dus,' etc., a work for which Mr. Spurgeon has expressed his 
high admiration, and which has had an immense circulation 
We know of hardly any modern treatise which is so full of the 
meat and marrow of the gospel as this, and which sets forth 
so clearly the fundamental doctrines of atonement and justifi- 
cation. There is 'The Blood of Jesus,' by William Reid— a 
small treatise, but one which has given to thousands of readers 
a new revelation of the simplicity of the gospel. There are the 
' C. S. Tracts,' brief presentations of the gospel to the inquirer. 
They have been scattered far and wide, and have, in our 
opinion, never been surpassed as clear expositions of the way 
of life to the unconverted. Of less popular works, we might 
mention Darby's ' Synopsis of the Bible/ the expositions of 
Kelly, Newton, Tregelles, Soltau, Pridham, and Jukes. These 
books, especially those of the first throe, have constituted the 
chief theological treasury of many of our evangelists. We can 
say for ourselves that, from the first time our eyes fell upon these 
treasures, we have nowhere else seen the gospel so luminously 
presented— the gospel of the grace of God, disencumbered of 
legalism and mysticism and tradition. Considered theologi- 
cally these are humble treatises. So was the ' Theologia Ger- 
manica,' out of which, through Luther, the German Refor- 
mation was born. So were the expositions of Peter Boehler, 
from which Wesley says he received his first true apprehension 
of saving faith. The springs of great reformations are often 
hidden and remote, but they rarely fail to be recognized in 
the end. 

" Besides books, there were men. This little sect of which 
we are speaking has certainly shown us some apostolic char- 
acters. When George Mliller set himself to live a life ' out 
and out for God,' and to prove in his own experience what 
can be accomplished by the single means of prayer and faith, 
many criticized, but few commended. When men like Darby 



88 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

and Wigram forsook their aristocratic associations, and laid 
down their great inherited wealth at the feet of Christ, going 
forth in apostolic fashion, without scrip or purse, to preach 
the gospel in every city, and in almost every European tongue, 
none went before them to sound the trumpet of fame. But 
such examples are always and inevitably contagious ; and they 
have doubtless affected the consecration of modern evangelism 
quite as strongly as the books have influenced its doctrine. 

" Such, we believe, after much thought and careful investi- 
gation and frequent conversations with those best qualified to 
judge, is the real spring of the present evangelistic movement. 
It demands a fearless candor to concede it, but we believe 
that truth requires us to confess that we owe a great debt, both 
in literature and in life, to the leaders of this ultra-Protestant 
movement. And w r e are glad to believe that the light which 
it has thrown out by its immense biblical study and research 
has been appropriated by many of the best preachers and 
evangelists in our Protestant churches." 

The summer of '76 Gordon spent with his wife in Europe. 
Nothing especially noteworthy occurred in the three months' 
visit. The hoary churches and refectories of Oxford, the 
gleaming peaks of the Jungfrau and of the Matterhorn, the 
surf-like roar of London, the idyllic windings of the Rhine, 
filled with interested pleasure the hearts of these, as of all 
tourists. In London he was specially drawn to the churches. 
For the first and only time in his life after his ordination (with 
the exception of a few Sundays of sickness and one solitary 
Sabbath in New Hampton) he occupied a seat in the congre- 
gation. The observations which he made from his new point 
of view are acute and discriminating, and give us, naturally 
enough, many intimations of the ideal and standard which he 
had set for himself. ' 

" ' The secret of power ' is much inquired after, and when 
one demonstrates that he has real ability in preaching or in 



WHERE THE ROOTS FED 89 

teaching, there is forthwith great speculation as to how it was 
acquired. But it ought to be suggested at the outset that the 
secret of power is not some algebraic x — the unknown quan- 
tity in the problem of success, which can be figured out, and 
set by itself, and its exact value determined. Real power 
comes from an even proportion and nice adjustment of all 
the faculties of the man ; and to imagine that there is some 
special secret which constitutes the philosopher's stone, that 
can transmute leaden failure into golden success, is to fall into 
a disastrous mistake. And so it has struck us again and 
again how utterly they come short who aim at power along 
some single line of culture or accomplishment. 

" There were three preachers heard during a European 
journey who furnished a complete lesson on this point. 

" There was, first, the intellectual preacher. He was such in- 
deed ; polished to the last degree, and dealing out real and 
carefully wrought thought. It was no ingenious serving up 
of scraps of borrowed opinion — no mere originality of literary 
pattern-working upon commonplace material. Here was a 
thinker, earnest, genuine, and thorough ; and if one should 
want to hear such, we would commend him by all means to 
this divine. But though the congregation was exceptionally 
intelligent, it was evident that the number who could follow 
his discourse was very small. To them it was stimulating, no 
doubt. Yet how about the great numbers who could not 
follow it? Good food, and something for all, must be the 
rule in feeding the flock of God. But there, just in front of 
me, was a respectful, sedate hearer. He might have been a 
grocer or a butcher or a coal-dealer. At all events, his busi- 
ness was such as gave him little training or aptitude for the 
refinements of thought and the delicate shadings of style to 
which he was now listening. And so I set to watching his 
face. Determination to be faithful in attending to the ser- 
vices was written on every feature. He was holding the 



90 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

muscles of his face to their Sunday tension. I saw drowsiness 
and inattention pulling at them, but in vain. And when, 
under the loud and somewhat monotonous tones of the 
preacher, he half drowsed, he would start from the perilous 
edge of sleep, and open such a wakeful and applauding glance 
on the minister as fairly humbled me. For said I, ' What a 
pity that hungry souls should have to stretch their necks and 
strain their appetites to get their spiritual food, and that they 
should have to look such loyal amens at the preacher when 
really they do not understand what he is saying! ' And so 
our good, patient, faithful hearer went out of church when the 
services were over. And if he had known the quotation, 
probably the truest confession he could have made would 
have been found in the lines of Tennyson's ' Northern 
Farmer, Old Style ' : 

" * An' 'eerd 'un a-bummin' awaay loike a buzzard clock ower my 'ead, 
An' I never knawed whot a mean'd, but I thowt a 'ad summut to saay, 
An' I thowt a said whot a owt to 'a' said, an' I coom'd awaay.' 

" Next we came upon the unctuous preacher. He made as 
much use of his heart and his handkerchief as the other did 
of his head and his learning. But who does not know how 
cheap the unction is that is merely poured upon the heart, and 
not pressed out of the heart by deep and genuine feeling? 
Ready-made emotion is not likely to fit a congregation very 
closely. If a preacher has no oil in his lamp, it matters little 
how profusely he pours oil on his head, or how lavishly it 
runs down his beard. In other words, fervor without light, 
feeling without truth, do not generally move one. When 
Robertson was discoursing on the love of God to sinners, and 
in the glow of his kindling thought a tear was seen to course 
down his cheek and fall upon his Bible, no wonder that they 
said that that was the most eloquent passage in his sermon. 



WHERE THE ROOTS FED 91 

There must be a certain amount of thought to give body to 
feeling ; it is the beaten oil of the sanctuary which alone con 
feed true unction. Oil produced from the olive-press of 
Gethsemane— emotion born of true fellowship with the suffer- 
ings of Christ — this alone can beget genuine sympathy. But 
the preacher whom I am describing sought to work up feeling 
by pathetic exclamations and fond phrases, and the like. And 
so I was not surprised at the comment of a Norwegian musi- 
cian, who chanced to be traveling in our company. In broken 
and entertaining English, he said, ' He did not seem to veel 
vat he says, and he did not says much.* 

" The third preacher whom we heard impressed me neither 
by his remarkable culture nor by his remarkable pathos. He 
had enough of each, however ; and the two elements were so 
evenly blended that neither was especially conspicuous. But 
he affected us very deeply. No admiration for the preacher's 
genius was awakened; no sense of his trying to make us 
weep was experienced. On the contrary, as he went on, we 
found ourselves thinking of our sins, and then adoring the 
Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. In 
fact, we confess that we were disappointed. We went to hear a 
great preacher, and from beginning to end never thought of 
him as such, so much were we occupied with self, the great 
sinner. 

'"Which now of these three? ' The first made his sermon 
a work of art. That was evidently his business. To that end 
he was pressing on with all his might. ' And by chance there 
came down a certain priest that way/ To find a poor, 
wounded, half-dead sinner, and pour the oil of grace into his 
heart, was not what he was bent on. He was about other 
matters — attending to his clerical duties, minding his theology, 
etc. — and if he should discover a lost sinner in his way, it 
would be entirely by chance. 



92 AD ONI RAM JUDSON GORDON 

" The second preacher beamed unctuously upon his congre- 
gation, ' oozing all over with the fat affectionate smile/ and 
anon dissolving his smiles in a solution of tears. But there 
was no grip of truth in all he said, no strong grappling with 
the conscience, no tears of penitence in the hearers eyes re- 
flecting tears of pity in the preacher's. ' And likewise a Le- 
vite came and looked ' (with gold-bowed spectacles, no doubt, 
which had constantly to be wiped because of his emotion), 
'and passed by on the other side.' 

"The third preacher uttered a message which came straight 
home ' to men's business and bosoms.' He was evidently 
bent on seeking out the sinner. ' This preaching finds me,' 
must have been the feeling of many a hearer. ' But a certain 
Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was.'' This is the 
preaching the world needs — not the discoursing in which the 
hearer gets glimpses, now and then, of the minister looking 
through the lattice of some flowery period, or emerging from 
some rhetorical circumlocution, only to disappear again into 
incomprehensibility. The preaching which comes close to 
the heart, and finds it, and blesses it, is what is wanted." 

On another Sunday Gordon had the interesting and novel 
experience of listening to his own words with the slight inci- 
dental modifications suitable to differing congregations. Then 
indeed was a mirror set before his eyes. For on going to a 
leading Presbyterian church he was surprised, when the text 
and headings were given out, to note how closely they followed 
a sermon scheme which he himself had used some months be- 
fore in Boston. As the sermon progressed from stage to stage, 
his own illustrations, his own metaphors, his very quotations, 
appeared as on an unfolding panorama. The London minis- 
ter had, Dr. Gordon afterward conjectured, read the sermon in 
a somewhat obscure American paper devoted to those prophetic 
exegeses with which he was closely in touch, and had repro- 
duced it presumably by a process of unconscious cerebration. 



WHERE THE ROOTS EED 93 

For when Gordon shook hands with him, introducing himself 
at the meeting's end, he was invited without the least apparent 
constraint or embarrassment, which the common ownership of 
such a secret would naturally involve, to the minister's home, 
and spent the day with him in pleasant intercourse. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE TIDE TURNS 



At work with Uncle John Vassar— The Moody meetings of '77 — Inci- 
dents of the "inquiry room" — "A question of casuistry" — The 
redeemed men — Communion reform 

AMONG all the influences which touched and vivified the 
jTjl. early ministry at Clarendon Street, none was stronger than 
that of Uncle John Vassar, a devoted laborer for souls. " Far 
beyond any man whom I ever knew," wrote Gordon, " was it 
true of him that his citizenship was in heaven, and so filled 
was he with the glory and the power of the heavenly life that 
to many he seemed like a foreigner speaking an unknown 
tongue. I have never been so humbled and quickened by 
contact with any living man as with him. Hundreds of 
Christians, while sorrowing that they shall see his face no 
more for the present, will bless God as long as they live for 
the inspiration which they have received from his devoted 
life." 

For five successive years, off and on, " Uncle John " labored 
with the Clarendon Street Church in his peculiar work of 
" spiritual census-taking," going through the streets of proud, 
cultivated, self-righteous Boston, ringing every door-bell, and 
confronting every household w r ith the great question of the 
new birth. He was wont to describe himself as "only a 
shepherd-dog, ready to run after the lost sheep and bring 
them back to the Shepherd," and ever refused the honors and 
emoluments of the ministry. He would literally travail in 

94 



THE TIDE TURNS 95 

prayer for the unconverted. " The nights which he spent at 
my home," writes Gordon, "were nights of prayer and plead- 
ing for my congregation and my ministry. Again and again 
would I hear him rising in the midnight hours to plead with 
God for the unsaved, till I had frequently to admonish him 
that he must not lose his sleep." And so he wrought and 
prayed and instructed the young minister, meekly teachable 
before such a master of spiritual things, in those hard-learned 
and rarely acquired secrets which open the way to the heart 
of hearts of sinful humanity. 

The inspiration which this faithful man brought with him 
accrued principally to the pastor of Clarendon Street. The 
influence of Mr. Moody's meetings in 1877 affected both 
pastor and people. Indeed, this year was the turning-point, 
the climacteric which, after seven years of lethargic religious 
life, opened a new period of spiritual health. When the re- 
vival meetings were finished, Gordon realized that the crest of 
the hill had been passed, and that the crisis in the struggle for 
a spiritual as against a secular church was over. 

These meetings, which were organized and carried on by 
Mr. Moody with all the executive ability and religious fervor 
for which he is distinguished, were held in a large Tabernacle 
—a great "tent," indeed, of brick and spruce timber, with 
nothing about it to attract but the gospel of Christ preached 
therein. This building stood within three hundred feet of the 
Clarendon Street Church, which was used from the beginning 
for overflow and "inquiry" meetings. The Tabernacle was 
thronged night after night by audiences of from five to seven 
thousand. People of all ranks and conditions attended. 
Excursion trains brought in thousands from all parts of New 
England. Seventy thousand families in Boston were person- 
ally visited. Great noon prayer-meetings were held daily in 
Tremont Temple by business men. Meetings were organized 
for young men, for boys, for women, for the intemperate— in 



96 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

short, for all classes in the community that were ready to help 
or be helped. 

And at the center of all these operations stood the Claren- 
don Street Church, like a cemetery temporarily occupied by 
troops in battle. What a shattering and overturning of 
weather-stained, moss-grown traditions followed! What ex- 
periences of grace, what widening vistas of God's power, what 
instruction in personal religion, resulted from these six months 
of revival! A new window was built into the religious life of 
the church, letting in floods of light. The true purpose of a 
church's existence began to be emphasized. Drunkards and 
outcasts were daily reclaimed, and brought into fellowship. 
Christian evidences of the best sort, evidences which had to 
do with the present potency of a saving Christ, were multi- 
plied to affluence, strengthening the faith of believers. The 
duty and opportunity of all in the work of the inquiry-room 
were asserted. A great education in methods of practical 
religious work resulted. 

We get a glimpse of the character of this movement, as it 
proceeded month after month, in the following reminiscences 
from Dr. Gordon's own pen : 

"In 1877, during Mr. Moody's meetings in Boston, there 
was an inquiry mee ing in our church. The house was full, 
and Mr. Moody sent me around to find workers to help. I 
came upon a woman with a baby. She was anxious to find 
Christ ; for when I approached her and asked if she wanted 
to be saved, she said, ' That is what I came here for.' 

" I stepped over to a gentleman on the front seat, a fine- 
looking man, and said, 'Are you a Christian? ' 

" ' Yes, sir,' he answered. 

" ' I want you to go over there and talk to an inquirer.' 

" ' I never talked to an inquirer,' he replied. 

" ' But you are a Christian? ' 

"'Yes.' 



THE TIDE TURNS 97 

" ' Here is a woman just ready to be led to Christ.' 
" ' Excuse me. I should not know what to say to her.' 
" Well, because I could not get him to go, I went over my- 
self and sat down beside the woman. But the baby was so 
restless that she could not give me her attention. The man 
kept watching us, and saw the situation. By and by he crept 
softly down and gave the baby some sweets, and took her in 
his arms and carried her to the other side of the church and 
held her for an hour, while I led the woman to Christ. He 
found that, if he could not lead a soul to Christ, he could 
hold the baby while some one else did. I think a special 
blessing rested upon that work ; for not only was the mother 
saved, but that little girl came to Christ when she was twelve 
years old, and I haven't a more aggressive Christian in my 
church than that baby has grown to be." 

"'Did I tell a lie?' 

" It was about as odd a question of casuistry as was ever 
propounded ; and yet, as I thought of it afterward, it seemed 
to go about as deeply into the heart of redemption as any 
which could be asked. 

" He was a real Irishman, whose brogue would identify 
him on the first interview. We have frequently noticed that 
when a genuine son of Erin becomes converted, and attempts 
to launch out into the language of Canaan, he provokes an 
irresistible smile on the faces of grave Christians. There is a 
certain quaintness of conception and expression which belongs 
peculiarly to the people of this race when dealing with re- 
ligious experience, of which we might give some very striking 
examples had we room. For this, however, we cannot now 
turn aside, but must come to our story. 

" Patrick Daley was one of the first to profess conversion 
in connection with Mr. Moody's recent evangelistic services 
in Boston. He had been a stanch Roman Catholic by per- 



98 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

suasion, but a desperate drunkard by practice. With an over- 
powering desire to be saved from his evil habit, he so far broke 
through the prejudices of his religion as to go and listen to 
the great evangelist. There he heard with astonishment and 
delight that the chief of sinners and the most hopeless of 
drunkards might find immediate forgiveness and deliverance 
through surrender to Jesus Christ. He went into the inquiry- 
room, and trustingly accepted the Saviour, and entered into 
great peace and joy in believing. With his conversion, he 
got rid not only of the heavy burden of his sin, but of the 
not less heavy burden of popish ceremonies and superstitions. 
All these he now counted loss for the excellency of the know- 
ledge of Christ Jesus the Lord, and descanted in no very 
temperate terms on the folly and abomination of the things 
in which he had formerly trusted. Several weeks after his 
conversion, he approached me at the close of a meeting with 
his story and his question. 

u ' You see, your reverence, I know a good thing when I 
get it ; and when I found salvation, I could not keep it to 
myself. Peter Murphy lived in the upper story of the same 
tenement with me. Murphy was a worse drunkard than I, if 
such a thing could be ; and we had gone on many a spree 
together. Well, when I got saved and washed clean in the 
blood of Christ, I was so happy I did not know what to do 
with myself. So I went up to Murphy, and told him what I 
had got. 

"'Poor Peter! he was just getting over a spree, and was 
pretty sick and sore, and just ready to do anything I told 
him. So I got him to sign the pledge, and then told him 
that Jesus alone could help him keep it. Then I got him on 
his knees, and made him pray and surrender to the Lord, as 
I had done. You never see such a change in a man as there 
was in him for the next week. I kept watch of him, and 
prayed for him, and helped him on the best I could, and, sure, 



THE TIDE TURNS 99 

he was a different man. Well, come Sunday morning, Joe 
Healey called round to pay his usual visit. This was the 
worst yet ; for Healey used to come to see Murphy as regu- 
lar as Sunday, always bringing a bottle of whisky with him, 
and these two would spree it all day, till they turned the 
whole house into a bedlam. Well, I saw Healey coming last 
Sunday morning, and I was afraid it would be all up with 
poor Murphy if he got with him. So when I went to the 
door to let him in, and he said, " Good-morning, Pat ; is 
Murphy in? " I said, "No; Murphy is out. He does not live 
here any longer;" and in this way I sent Healey off, and saved 
Murphy from temptation. ' 

" Here was the burden of his question ; for he continued : 

" ' Did I tell a lie? What I meant was that the old Murphy 
did not live there any more. For you know Mr. Moody told 
us that when a man is converted he is a new creature ; old 
things have passed away. And I believe that Murphy is a 
new creature, and that the old Murphy does not live any 
more in that attic. That is what I meant. Did I tell a 
lie? ' 

" Candid reader, what should I say? In the light of PauPs 
great saying, ' Nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth 
in me,' can it be denied that Patrick Daley was right? 

" It may be claimed that it is a dangerous kind of theologi- 
cal jugglery which we here encounter. ' What I hate, that I 
do/ says Paul. Alas! no one who knows the depths of an 
evil nature can deny that. ' If then I do that which I would 
not, I consent unto the law that it is good.' Yes ; certainly 
that is true. ' Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin 
that dwelleth in me.' Ah! here is a conclusion which may 
well startle us. Can we prove an alibi at the judgment-seat? 
Can we swear the blame of our wrong-doing upon the inbred 
sin which dwelt within us, and expect to go scot-free our- 
selves? When the sheriff of the law comes knocking at our 



100 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

door to arrest us and hale us away to prison, can we say, 
1 Old I doesn't live here any more ; the new man occupies the 
house now ' ? 

" It can hardly be denied that Paul's theology is very radi- 
cal in just this direction. ' Unselfed and inchristed ' is the 
phrase that has been employed to set forth the great trans- 
action of spiritual renewal ; and observe how the apostle en- 
courages us to serve a writ of ejection on the old tenant, our 
evil self, and to bring in a new occupant of the premises : 
' That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old 
man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts ; . . . 
and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in 
righteousness and true holiness. ' No betterment or refor- 
mation of the depraved tenant, who is always in hopeless ar- 
rears with his landlord, but a peremptory order to move out! 
Moreover, the Christian is considered to have done this very 
thing— evicted his former self, and set its goods and chattels 
out upon the sidewalk. ' Seeing that ye have put off the old 
man with his deeds ; and have put on the new man, which is 
renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created 
him.' So vividly and strongly did this conception take hold 
of Martin Luther that he used to say, ' When any one comes 
and knocks at the door of my heart and asks, " Who lives 
here?" I reply, " Martin Luther used to, but he has moved 
out, and Jesus Christ now lives here." ' " 

Before the meetings were ended nearly thirty reclaimed 
drunkards had been received into the Clarendon Street Church. 
The general opinion was that these men would not stand even 
to the end of the year. Yet Gordon was able to say some 
time after, in a Northfield address, " Of those who have con- 
tinued their residence with us, all have remained steadfast, 
as consistent, as devoted, and as useful members as we have, 
a demonstration that God can instantly change a man from 



THE TIDE TURNS 101 

the vilest and worst drunkard to one in the way to the high- 
est saintship." 

After his death a few pencilings were found among his 
papers describing the conversion of one of these men. He 
had started to write an eighth chapter for the fragment of 
spiritual autobiography which was issued posthumously under 
the title of "A Pastor's Dream." These few notes were 
found too late for publication. In the preceding chapters he 
had described the entrance of Christ into the church where he 
was preaching, and the effect which his presence had had on 
him. Continuing, he says : 

" Why he visited our sanctuary on that Lord's day morning, 
and what gracious lessons he taught us concerning his power 
and his coming, we have learned in the previous chapters. 
But longing for yet greater blessings, we still press the ques- 
tion, 'But wherefore, O Master, earnest thou in thither?' 
Was he searching, perchance, for a lost sheep? That were 
a sufficient reason, as he himself has taught us, why he 
should leave the ninety and nine which are safely sheltered, 
and go after the one which has strayed. Yes ; but this would 
not seem to be the place to look for straying lambs. A beau- 
tiful Gothic church, richly carpeted and upholstered, and filled 
with a sober and respectable congregation, is not, as a rule, 
the resort of wretched outcasts. In the miserable slums, amid 
the reek and defilement of human sewage, we shall find such, 
and not in this elegant modern sanctuary. Thank God, how- 
ever, there are exceptions to such a rule. 

" No. 40 was the pew where, in vision, I saw the Master 
seated on that memorable Sunday morning. Directly behind, 
in the pew next to the door, is where, not in a dream, but in 
sad reality, I found the lost sheep. He had not strayed in by 
accident ; he had been bleating about the fold for some hours 
with the vague hope of finding help ; but Satan, with the pre- 
monition that he was about to be deprived of his prey, had 



102 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

made a last desperate effort to retain him. Each saloon he 
had passed in his way to the church had smitten him with a 
fresh cup of alcoholic poison, till, sore broken in the place of 
dragons, and covered with the shadow of death, he had crept 
into this remote corner of the church and swooned away into 
a drunken sleep. Humanly speaking it was only by the 
merest accident that I discovered him. The congregation 
had dispersed after the evening service ; the lights, excepting 
two or three near the door, had been turned off, when, passing 
down the aisle, I discovered what seemed to be a pile of filthy 
rags, beneath which, on examination, I found as wretched a 
specimen of ruined humanity as I ever set eyes on. 'Call a 
policeman. Take him away to the lockup ' would no doubt 
have . . ." 

Here the pen dropped, never to be resumed. 

The " wretched specimen of ruined humanity " became, 
through the miracle of conversion, a most extraordinary ex- 
ample of the transforming and sustaining power of God's 
Spirit. For seventeen long years the man here referred to 
has, in the divine strength, been kept from falling. The slave 
was freed ; his family reunited in Christian fellowship. No 
testimony has been more eloquent, because of its evident truth 
and because of its note of thankfulness, than this man's, so 
unfailingly given in the evening meetings of the church. In 
season and out of season, at the shop and among the squalid 
wrecks at mission meetings, has he borne witness to God's 
presence. And even on Boston Common, where Whitefield 
preached to the multitudes of an earlier generation with such 
power that tears might be seen on every cheek, the pitiable 
drunkard, now clean and whole and in his right mind, may be 
found on warm afternoons in the leafy months, setting forth 
the gospel of Christ to the motley crowds about him. 

No one knows as well as Dr. Gordon's most intimate friends 
the complete and triumphant satisfaction which the conversion 



THE TIDE TURNS 103 

of these ruined men gave him. No one else knows how 
tender was the solicitude with which he watched their lives, 
even as the Good Shepherd himself. The ninety and nine 
just persons who need no repentance— who are busied with 
literature, social life, and what not — doubtless felt how little 
this man sympathized with their life, and how languid was his 
interest in their enthusiasms. He was no social pet, no rev- 
erend idol! His enthusiasm was for the poor, wretched, 
submerged, helpless, and hopeless sinner. To such he gave 
his heart and his time and his strength. The " redeemed 
men " were to him the jewels of his church. In reclaimed 
sinners he saw the flowering of the truth. They were as the 
lotus growing out of the mud. We well remember his sigh of 
relief on coming from the death-bed of one of these men at 
the City Hospital. MacNamara was a miserable, drunken 
beggar, with hardly three garments on him, when he first ap- 
peared at the pastor's home ; but he was not beyond the reach 
of Christ. Poor, weak man! though strong in the new 
strength, falling, yet ever rising, and dying, finally, a trium- 
phant death! " MacNamara is safe now," were the words on 
Gordon's lips as he returned from the hospital that day. No 
more anguish, no more heart-sorrow, for this child of his. He, 
the under-shepherd, had passed him on to the great Shepherd 
of the sheep, who carries the lambs in his bosom, and gently 
leads them that are with young. MacNamara is safe! 

The entrance of so many reformed men into the church 
necessitated changes in the administration of the communion, 
which have now become general. The cup of dragons could 
not be offered to men whom it had tortured and poisoned. 
Nor could it represent the perfect Sacrifice, the untainted 
Passover. The first consideration was forced upon the church 
by the presence of these members, newly emancipated from 
the bondage of alcoholism. The second was the result of a 
careful exegetical study, which led finally to the abandonment 



104 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

of fermented elements altogether, and the substitution there- 
for of the pure juice of the grape and of unleavened Passover 
bread. In justification of this supplanting of "that fallen 
angel of creation, that right-hand minister of the evil one," 
an exhaustive study of the whole subject was published. 
From this we can draw only a brief extract. 

After commenting on the fact that the only two terms used 
in Scripture in this connection are " the cup " and " the fruit of 
the vine," and that the word " wine " is nowhere employed to 
describe the symbolic blood; and after noting that the term 
" fruit of the vine " could hardly signify fermented wine, since 
the usages of the Jewish Passover, out of which the commu- 
nion sprang, seem to forbid its employment by the rigid ex- 
clusion of leaven ; and after quoting statements of living 
rabbis which interdict the use of wine in the Passover service 
of to-day, he says : 

"The use of fermented wine seems to mar the symbolism 
of this divine ordinance. The crimson wine poured out 
brings graphically before us Christ's blood which was shed for 
the remission of sins ; the drinking of the cup tells plainly of 
our nourishment through the imparted life of Christ. But 
there is another idea which should be suggested by this sacra- 
ment, the immaculateness of the Redeemer's blood. 

" The Passover loaf was typical of Jesus Christ. It is im- 
portant, therefore, that the symbols which point back to 
Christ should be as significant as those which pointed forward 
to him. The unleavened bread was rigidly insisted on as 
the ceremonial prophecy of Christ ; the unleavened bread was 
used in instituting the memorial sacrament of Christ ; and we 
hold that the unleavened bread meets the typical requirements 
and therefore should still be retained in the eucharist. We 
apply the same principle to the cup. It is the symbol of ' the 
precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and 
without spot.' Here is the one blood in which there is no 



THE TIDE TURNS 105 

taint of hereditary sin, no trace of natural or acquired deprav- 
ity. What can adequately symbolize the holy blood of him 
who, 'through the eternal Spirit, offered up himself without 
spot unto God? ' 

" Scripture declares that leaven signifies corruption ; chemis- 
try pronounces that fermentation is death. How then can 
this element typify Christ? Can corruption stand as the 
similitude of the Incorruptible One? Can death show forth 
him who is the Life? It may be fitting that those who are 
'the degenerate plants of a strange vine'— the deniers of 
Christ's spotless humanity — should symbolize their faith by 
the cup in which the depravity of alcohol is working to pro- 
duce all manner of concupiscence ; but let the branches of the 
True Vine, who rejoice in the holiness of their Head, contend 
for the true fruit of the vine, and so keep the cup of the Lord 
innocent and undepraved till they drink it new in the kingdom 
of the Father." 



CHAPTER VIII 

REFORM FOR INDIVIDUAL AND STATE 

The Boston Industrial Temporary Home — An answer to prayer — Wendell 
Phillips and the drunkard— Crossett of North China — Advocacy of 
prohibition— Cooperation with Joseph Cook in reform work — The 
Prohibition party — Woman's cause 

HOW to discriminate between the worthy and the unworthy 
— between the man who is trying and the man who is lying 
— is the eternal crux in the problem of charity. The Moody 
meetings had brought to Dr. Gordon's attention, as never 
before, the possibilities, the encouragements, and the dangers 
inhering in work among drunkards. The futility of preach- 
ing to those whose stomachs are faint and empty became 
speedily evident. The need, too, of a temporary refuge for 
converted men, who without such a place would be likely to 
drift back into old haunts, forced itself on him. The Indus- 
trial Temporary Home, an institution very like the Salvation 
Army " shelters " of a later day, was started, therefore, for the 
immediate relief of those out of work, and as a means of de- 
termining the value and reality of professions made by men 
of this class. The practical importance of the enterprise was 
clear from the first. From the first, too, its peculiar difficul- 
ties were apparent. Embarrassing financial problems met the 
committee in charge at every turn. The various superinten- 
dents and matrons, who succeeded one another with ominous 
rapidity, proved collectively incompetent. Trustees became 
discouraged, resignation followed resignation, financial back- 

106 



REFORM FOR INDIVIDUAL AND STATE 107 

ing was withdrawn ; the craft was clearly water-logged and 
sinking. 

Responsibility was shifted, finally, entirely upon Dr. Gor- 
don's shoulders. For a term of years he carried almost alone 
the heavy weight of a work the only assured fruit of which 
was the annually recurring deficit. Burdened with this great 
care, he left the city one summer to take a brief vacation in 
the hill-country. A sense of deep disheartenment pressed 
heavily upon him. An undertaking promising, useful, neces- 
sary, was trembling on the edge of disruption. There was no 
human help in sight. He was driven, therefore, into the arms 
of God. Every morning during the whole summer he with- 
drew to a quiet place in the woods, a spot still, sun-dappled, 
and there laid before the Lord the discouragements and the 
needs of the work. Summer passed, and in early September he 
was back again in the city. Seated in his study a few days 
after his arrival, he was handed a note in unfamiliar writing, 
requesting an immediate interview. Replying to the summons 
and hunting up the address, he soon found himself in the 
chamber of an old man, in a quarter of the city long deserted 
by residents and given over now to the roar of traffic. The 
man was an entire stranger, a relic of a rapidly passing gener- 
ation, inordinately fond of his properties, as was afterward 
learned. There he sat, dry, wizened, in skullcap, surrounded 
by a clutter of dust-covered documents and papers, a bottle 
of brandy at his left hand. His intentions were soon made 
known. He had learned during the summer of the Industrial 
Home, and had become convinced of the reasonableness and 
expediency of its method. He wished, therefore, to make 
provision for it in his will, and to get suggestions from Gordon 
looking toward the enlargement of the work and the placing 
of it upon a secure basis. 

This day's interview was the first in a series of events which 
resulted in the complete solution of this problem of many 



10S ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

weary years. The bequest when paid amounted to over 
twenty thousand dollars. A strong cabinet was formed for 
the more efficient care of the institution, composed of men 
able, generous, reliable — men who have stood by to the 
present day. As a result of further earnest prayer, a superin- 
tendent of exceptional ability and consecration, a converted 
horse-jockey, was brought unexpectedly to Dr. Gordon's 
notice, one who for many years has not only conducted the 
Home with superior executive skill, but has also helped to 
found homes of a like character in many of our Northern and 
Western cities. In a short time the institution was on a pay- 
ing basis. At present nearly thirty-five thousand lodgings are 
provided annually, and about fifty thousand meals. Best of 
all, a successful rescue work is being earned on which has 
brought hundreds from the gutter into the church. 

" It was the greatest lesson in faith I have ever had," said 
Gordon once, in recounting the experience. " From that day 
to this I have prayed with the greatest assurance of God's 
intervention in practical matters." From that day to his 
death, too, he labored for the Home, the last time that he 
was out before his final sickness being at its annual commit- 
tee-meeting. His associates declared in resolutions after his 
death : 

" He was, indeed, the central figure [in the work], being in 
a sense its founder, and always its devoted friend, giving to 
it unceasingly his time, his thought, his effort, and his 
prayers. . . . His devotion to the work of saving men was 
always prominent and supreme. In this respect we gladly 
concede that in service and sacrifice he has outstripped us all." 

The following letter gives us an intimation of his constant 
interest in the Home : 

" Dear Brother Roberts : I have only now found time 
to reply to your letter. I appreciate more and more your 



REFORM FOR INDIVIDUAL AND STATE 109 

work. It is the work for reaching men. I am sure there is 
no occasion for you to be disturbed in any way. So far as I 
can judge, it is going on well and satisfactorily. It requires 
much patience at your end of the line, and it requires much 
at this end to keep up with the door-bell, and to hear all the 
calls for help — a perfect stream this morning, giving us hardly 
a half-hour's rest. But we must all keep the two bears well 
fed and under constant control, namely, 'bear and forbear.' 
Both of these are liable to get out of their cages, and no- 
where is their good nature more taxed than at your Home 
and my home. May the God of peace keep our hearts and 
minds in perfect peace. 

"Yours in Christ, 

"A. J. Gordon." 

In the early days of struggle and isolation, Gordon had 
been immensely encouraged by the sympathy which the first 
citizen of the commonwealth, Wendell Phillips, constantly 
showed to him in this undertaking. In some reminiscences 
of the great agitator, published shortly after his departure, he 
refers to this : 

"In temperance work I saw more of Wendell Phillips's 
heart than anywhere else. He struck hard blows against the 
drink iniquity. But here he was not merely an iconoclast, 
bringing down his hammer upon license laws, which, next to 
fugitive-slave laws, he hated most intensely ; he was a healer 
as well as a smiter. He used to come into the Home for re- 
forming inebriates, which we started at the time of the Moody 
and Sankey meetings, to inquire after the enterprise and give 
it his encouragement. He sometimes brought in poor, broken- 
down drunkards, to ask the help of our Christian workers on 
their behalf. His indignation against the rumseller, and the 
laws that sustained him, was matched only by his tender 
compassion toward the wretched victims of strong drink. 



no ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Once, with one of our Christian women, the question came 
up as to the possibility of reclaiming the confirmed drunkard, 
when she, with all the ardor of her conviction, declared that 
there was certainly one way, viz., by the grace of God brought 
to bear in a renewed heart. And I cannot describe the sym- 
pathetic tenderness with which he assented to the remark, 
nor the spirit of humble self-distrust with which he alluded, in 
a single sentence, to his own experience." 

Others would occasionally stray into the Home besides 
outcasts. Some ten years ago a minute was forwarded to the 
State Department from the American consul in Shanghai, 
describing the life of a Mr. Crossett, an independent mission- 
ary in China, who worked throughout the province of Shan- 
tung, preaching, visiting prisons, nursing the sick, burying the 
dead. He was much of an ascetic, living chiefly on rice, 
millet, and water. The Chinese revered him, calling him the 
Christian Buddha, and freely gave him food and lodging. A 
little notice of him was published in the " Watchword " at the 
time of his death : 

" We were honored to know the man well. In the Indus- 
trial Home in Boston of which we are president— an institu- 
tion to lodge and feed the homeless and stranger requiring 
work, with the saw and ax as compensation — we first found 
him. Being in the city as a stranger, he preferred to lodge 
in this place, working for his board, to asking hospitality. An 
educated man of keen, original mind, men called him very 
eccentric. He was so since he made Christ his center, and 
hence was thrown out of center with the customs and tradi- 
tions of the world. 

" Eccentricity is a relative term. The orthodoxy of one 
age often becomes the heterodoxy of another. The faith of 
primitive Christianity is at some points scouted as the fanati- 
cism of latter-day Christianity. The first sign of alleged in- 
sanity which Mr. Crossett exhibited was in his laying hands 



REFORM FOR INDIVIDUAL AND STATE in 

on the sick for their recovery. He learned it of his Chinese 
converts, they having learned it from the New Testament. 
He at first forbade them, but they challenged him by the 
Word of God whether they were not enjoined to do so. He 
had to concede it ; then he practised it, and was set down as 
touched with insanity. . . . We had much sweet converse 
and prayer with him. May he rest in peace." 

It is a rare thing indeed for one who has wrought any 
length of time among the poor, and for the rescue of drunk- 
ards, to fail to develop convictions upon the duty of the State 
in regard to the saloon. Monumental insane asylums, ever- 
widening potter's fields, and the vast, unending streams of 
miserable poverty— which, as investigators one and all, from 
Charles Booth to the humblest charity visitor, agree, flow 
from the doors of this institution as from a chief source — 
quicken indignation and stimulate belief in a " root-and- 
branch " policy. Gordon was no exception to this experi- 
ence. " He was broad enough, " wrote Dr. O. P. Gifford of 
him, " to look beyond the individual to the State. Some men 
make bricks; others make buildings. Some can never see 
beyond the unit; others can think of the sum. Dr. Gordon 
tried to help men who were in need, but he also strove for 
the health of the State. He was always ready to cast his 
vote and to raise his voice for prohibition. The Good Sa- 
maritan in the parable received commendation because he 
helped the man who had fallen among thieves. Dr. Gordon 
deserves greater commendation ; for, while he ministered to 
the unfortunate through the Home, he hindered the robber 
through the State. He was not foolish enough to spend his 
money on bandages and oil, paying part of the bills, mean- 
while, by licensing the brigands. He combined sympathy 
for the wronged with sense for the thief. The Pharisees 
might use the price of Christ to buy a potter's field ; but Dr. 
Gordon had no patience with men who would sell humanity 



112 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

and compromise with evil by taking money wherewith to buy 
burying-grounds. His great patience came nearest to ex- 
haustion when he saw politicians putting the State in pawn 
for license fees, and professing Christians casting votes to 
strengthen the politicians, and sharing the spoils. ... In 
pulpit and platform he never flinched in his advocacy of total 
abstinence for the individual and prohibition for the State, 
Like the pillar of Israel's wanderings, he was light for those 
who sought liberty, but lightning for the Egyptians who fol- 
lowed to enslave." 

No consideration of expediency ever affected him. The 
opportunism of the so-called high-license system he opposed 
on grounds of conscience with utmost vigor. " ' The moral 
law,' " he used to say, quoting Vinet, " ' is an arithmetic in 
which there are only even numbers, no fractions. In other 
words, there are no half-duties in God's requirements. ' If 
we cannot enforce our view we can at least witness against 
any other which compromises with this disreputable iniquity. 
There is a power in steady, year-after-year protest which will 
make itself felt in the long run." 

One can hardly deny now that his moral intuitions have 
been, in the light of the continuous and complete failure of 
half-measures, entirely 'justified. The saloon, with its Gar- 
gantua appetite, goes on swallowing everything we prize — 
virtue, honor, wealth, integrity, political purity, the sanctities 
of the home. "The new barbarism," as they fitly call it in 
France, yearly extends its sway. Only one policy has in any 
degree driven it back — the policy of prohibitive extinction. 

Every one familiar with the life of Boston knows how diffi- 
cult it is for moral reform to get a foothold on its congealed 
and slippery respectability. The traditions of reform are up- 
held by ostracized men. Phillips in the last generation and 
Joseph Cook in our day have been social pariahs for the 
truth's sake, cast out in the one case by the Cotton Whigs, 



REFORM FOR INDIVIDUAL AND STATE 113 

and in the other by a dull, rich, respectable bourgeoisie. 
"This Joseph," remarked Gordon once, referring to Mr. 
Cook, "like that other Joseph, whose branches ran over the 
wall, has been sorely shot at by the archers. But we rejoice 
that, like that same Joseph, his bow to-day abides in strength." 
Side by side, the two wrought, supporting not what was politic, 
but what was right. It is interesting to think of the old veteran 
of antislavery giving them his blessing as he himself left the 
stage. 

" There is a grand movement in the way of temperance on 
foot," said Gordon one day, in a little speech at the Monday 
lectureship, "led by what Wendell Phillips used to call 'the 
Beacon Street reformers.' He sat yonder one morning, almost 
the last time I ever saw him, and after he heard what was said 
here, remarked to me as he went out, ' Well, I might as well 
retire ; the temperance cause is in good hands ; I think we 
can safely leave it there.' . , . A certain class of reformers 
have a theory that the way to destroy low dives is by high 
license. These men say, ' Why cannot we unite, bring to- 
gether all the temperance forces— the license men and the 
Prohibitionists, the high-license men and the low-license men ? 
Why cannot we all unite, and present a solid front? ' Why 
not? Because two men cannot pull in the same direction 
when one has his face toward the north and the other has his 
face toward the south. There is just the difference between 
license and prohibition. They pull in opposite directions, and 
there is no use to try to compromise or bridge over the diffi- 
culty. I remember that Frances Power Cobbe tells us that 
she heard two Irishmen talking in London, and that one of 
them said to a stranger, ' Can you tell me how far it is to 
Hampstead Heath? ' ' Ten miles,' was the reply. He turned 
to his friend and said, ' That makes it five miles apiece ; we 
can easily do that.' How far is it to the abolition of the 
liquor traffic? The whole length of prohibition. We must 



114 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

go the whole distance, every one of us. It is no use to divide 
it up between high license and low license. We have got to 
go the whole way." 

At every opportunity he bore testimony against the un- 
righteous traffic. " There is no matter nearer my heart," he 
wrote to a Kansas judge whom he was urging to take charge 
of certain resolutions on the subject at the annual denomi- 
national gathering, " than the prohibition of the liquor traffic. 
If you will come to Chicago and take the stroke-oar, I will 
pull behind you to the best of my ability." And at another 
meeting of the same character in Boston, when a humble 
brother with a sound conscience introduced out of due course 
a resolution protesting against the exportation of Medford 
rum to West Africa and was duly suppressed by the scrupu- 
lous parliamentarian in the chair, Gordon started to his feet 
with the exclamation, " Order or no order, we cannot as 
Christians afford to table that resolution!" The protest was 
carried with a cheer. 

His political connections during the last decade of his life 
were determined by his convictions on this point. With 
Arnold, he had " an intense abhorrence of all party ties save 
that one tie which binds a man to the party of Christ against 
wickedness." Moral issues with him transcended all others. 
The defeat or victory of either of the dominant " realm-ruining 
parties " was, he felt, a matter of comparative unimportance. 
When the Prohibition party, therefore, was organized in 1884, 
he joined himself to it, assisted in the establishment of its 
organ, the New York " Voice," contributed to its campaign 
funds, and spoke repeatedly at its public meetings. It was a 
period of heated controversy. The defection of a large con- 
tingent of voters from the Republican party resulted in its 
defeat for the first time in a quarter-century. Much petty 
persecution of Prohibitionists followed. Ministers who had 
not been cajoled by the " catnip-tea resolutions " of the 



REFORM FOR INDIVIDUAL AND STATE 115 

politicians were crowded out of their churches. The leaders 
in the secession were hung or burned in effigy. Warmth of 
opinion was engendered between friends who disagreed. We 
get a suggestion of this in the following letter : 

" I was sorry after you left that I had my discussion on the 
issues of the day. It is a time of deep agitation, and there 
are great issues at stake. It will not be always easy to keep 
cordial feelings between friends who differ. I sympathize with 
your tender regard for the old party. As long as I read only 
the Boston 'Journal' I felt very much the same. But I 
have been reading widely since I came home and examining 
carefully, and I have perfect rest and peace in the position 
which I have taken. I believe that in the providence of God 
the time has come for the readjustment of parties. That re- 
adjustment may come through the setting aside of some things 
that are dear to us, but I pray God it may come. 

" I have not the slightest desire to change you, for I know 
you are as set as I am in what you believe. But I want you 
to read all sides, that you may see your pastor is not utterly 
unreasonable and erratic. So will you kindly read some 
things which I may send you from time to time? You will 
find them interesting. 

"To-day is the anniversary of our marriage. Wendell 
Phillips told me that had it not been for his wife, he might 
not have been an antislavery man. I think my wife's clear, 
strong convictions, coupled with her self-denying work for the 
wretched victims of drink, have done not a little to confirm 

my convictions. 

" Yours cordially, 

"A.J. Gordon." 

Gordon's opinions on questions of moral and social reform 
always rang true like a bell without flaw, on whatever side 



Il6 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

they were struck. The extinction of the saloon, the relief of 
the unemployed, unrestrained freedom of speech, the emanci- 
pation of women, the protection of Chinese immigrants, the 
defense of the secular, State-controlled schools against ultra- 
montanism — for all these things he spoke as only a man of 
positive religious convictions can. He was, as he said of 
another, a citizen "with iron in his blood and blood in his 
cheek, who could strike vigorously for the right and blush 
visibly for the wrong." * Scores of times did he confront legis- 
lative committees in the green room of the State capitol or in 
the chambers of the city council to plead for some just law 
or to protest against some iniquitous measure. His cham- 
pionship of woman's cause was constant and chivalric. 
Those who speak of 

" Women sobbing out of sight 
Because men make the laws," 

run the risk, perhaps, of seeming strained in their opinions and 
even fanatical to people with quiet homes and a protected 
family life. It is the experiences in bare garrets, the pastoral 
contacts with unobserved though none the less sadly existent 
suffering among women, which teach wisdom on this point. 
That women, therefore, might have opportunity not merely to 
correct the laws which men make, but to pass others which 
they have not made and seem not to care to make — laws for 
the protection of girlhood, for the relief of women wage- 
earners, for the defense of woman's kingdom, the home, 
against our licensed Kurds, the saloon-keepers— he advocated 
their complete enfranchisement and their entrance into every 
political and social privilege enjoyed by man. 

* Memorial address, Hon. Richard Fletcher, Supreme Court of Mas- 
sachusetts. 



CHAPTER IX 

ON THE HIGHWAYS 

Arrested for preaching on Boston Common — The New England Evangeli- 
zation Society — How to reach the unchurched — Address at Plymouth, 
" Forefathers' Day " 

IN the June of 1885 an incident occurred which illustrates 
how willingly this most unobtrusive and modest of men 
stood when necessary, even at the expense of much personal 
humiliation, for the common rights of American citizenship. 
" For the simplest, devoutest, and most peaceful preaching of 
the word of the Son of man " on Boston Common Dr. Gor- 
don was summoned to court and fined by the same city 
government which, as if to emphasize the deep gulf fixed be- 
tween the instincts and purposes of the Irish Catholic and 
American Protestant elements in the community, was honor- 
ing almost at the same time a vulgar and brutal pugilist with 
a public meeting in Music Hall and with a public presenta- 
tion by the mayor * of a diamond-studded belt. It is interest- 
ing to note further, as suggestive of the amiable tendencies of 
Romanism and as disclosing the real hand back of the puppets 
of the city council, that five years after this, when for the first 
time the Irish canaille controlled the entire city government 
of Boston, a Romanist t who had been made chief of police 
in Calcutta signalized his regime by forbidding open-air 
preaching in that city and by arresting the venerable Caius 
McDonald for a violation of the ordinance. Semper et ubique! 

* Hon. Hugh O'Brien. t Sir Henry L. Harrison. 

117 



Ii8 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Gordon's arrest was only one in a series. Mr. H. L. Has- 
tings had been put in jail for reading on Flagstaff Hill with- 
out note or comment passages from three chapters of the 
Bible. Rev. W. L. Davis, for similar breaches of the public 
peace, was imprisoned for more than a year in close confine- 
ment in Murderers' Row, Charlestown Prison, allowed no ex- 
ercise, insulted by turnkeys, and given insufficient food until 
scurvy set in. Tract-distribution was stopped by the police. 
A worthy and devout lady was arrested and taken to a police 
station merely because she had sung a portion of a hymn to a 
poor unfortunate on the street. Petty persecutions of others 
engaged in outdoor religious work followed. The legal justi- 
fication for these outrages was deduced from an ordinance 
passed during the Civil War forbidding meetings on public 
grounds unless permission had been previously granted. 
From 1862 to 1882 such permits were easily procured. In 
1882 the Y. M. C. A., which for fifteen years had conducted 
open-air services, applied for them as usual. They were re- 
fused. In 1883 they applied again and were refused. In 
1884 their application to the chairman of the Common Coun- 
cil was not even answered. The following year they organized 
a meeting on the Common to test the action of the munici- 
pal authorities. It was for addressing this meeting that Dr. 
Gordon was arrested and fined. In court Judge Adams de- 
clared that the by-law precluded objectionable persons alone 
from speaking, and that any responsible people could obtain 
permits. This decision made it clear that the committee on 
the Common had administered the statute in question arbi- 
trarily. Appeal was immediately made for permission to use 
the Common during the remainder of the season. This was 
denied until legal measures were taken to obtain it. 

That such scandalous crimes against free speech should be 
committed, of all places, on Boston Common, where one hun- 
dred and forty-five years before Whitefield had addressed 



ON THE HIGHWAY 119 

thirty thousand people in the open air and where every foot 
of ground was consecrated to freedom by the memories of the 
Revolution, was sufficiently humiliating. That they should 
be perpetrated upon men whose traditions of personal liberty 
ran back to the folkmotes of the German forests, traditions 
enunciated once for all and in classic form by John Milton 
and Jeremy Taylor two hundred years before, was a further 
aggravation. But that the perpetrators should be irredeem- 
able aliens, whose fathers were savage kerns in the peat-bogs 
long after Naseby and Lexington, was perhaps the most 
odious feature in the whole proceeding. Public indignation 
was aroused. Professor Austin Phelps wrote : " Freedom of 
speech is too sacred a right to be subjected to the petty 
tyrannies of the O's and Mac's so significantly numerous in 
the nomenclature of our city government. Restriction of 
free speech on Boston Common is as much out of place there 
as a whipping-post." Dr. Brooks and Dr. A. P. Peabody 
wrote in a similar vein. Petitions for the repeal of the ordi- 
nance, numerously signed by representative men, were sent in. 
The city government, under the pressure, granted four even- 
ings for hearings on the subject of street-preaching. These 
meetings, which packed City Hall to the roof, were a memo- 
rable protest against an obnoxious municipal regulation. 
Speeches in behalf of repeal were made by Dr. A. H. Plumb, 
Dr. Brooke Herford, Joseph Cook, and A. J. Gordon. The 
gag-law was not rescinded, however, and still stands a menace 
to liberty of speech. But thanks to this vigorous agitation 
against it, it has practically fallen into disuse. 

Open-air preaching was not, then, to be suppressed by an 
Hibernicized city government. The New England Evange- 
listic Association, founded within eighteen months, made it an 
especial feature of its work. Dr. Gordon frequently spoke 
under its auspices, now in Roxbury from the tail of a cart, 
now by the arching surf at Crescent Beach, now on the Com- 



120 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

mon itself. For many years he served as chairman of the 
examining committee, taking great interest in the selection 
and guidance of young men and women in these outdoor 
and house-to-house enterprises. He always cherished a deep 
interest in efforts to reach the unevangelized, and lamented 
the drift of churches, so general in American cities, from 
needy into prosperous localities. Writing of the situation in 
Boston, he said : 

" . . . The usage has been for the churches to retreat be- 
fore the incoming tide of poverty and illiteracy as it has 
swept over the older part of the city, and to cover their retreat 
by throwing out a picket-line of mission stations. Only two 
original churches remain on the ground first occupied by the 
gospel in Boston. The sepulchers of Increase and Cotton 
Mather are with us to this day ; they sleep hard by the scene 
of their useful labors. But the churches to which they minis- 
tered have moved on with all their neighbors, except old 
Christ Church and the later Baptist Bethel. Nothing so 
tends to disaffect the common people with the gospel as to 
move the church away from them, on the ground that it 
must follow wealth and fashion. I cannot tell how many 
non-church-goers I have met whose sore spot I have found, 
by probing, to be just this : ' The church left me, and so I left 
the church ; they cared nothing for me, and I care nothing 
for them.' It is a natural retaliation for the violation of that 
divine law, ' The rich and poor meet together : the Lord is the 
maker of them all.' Dr. Chalmers used to say, 'A house- 
going minister makes a church-going people.' Of course. 
Let the people see that the church cares enough for them to 
follow them into their homes with its ministry of help and 
blessing, and to stay by those homes for their spiritual pro- 
tection, and they will not desert it. The law is just as in- 
evitable that a house-leaving church will make a church-leav- 
ing people. Most of the churches that were born at the north 



ON THE HIGHWAYS 121 

end of the city are now huddled together at the south end 
and on the Back Bay — the newest portions of the town — so 
close that they can almost catch each other's eavesdroppings. 
Some of them ought to have moved ; but some ought to have 
remained, or at least to have left their sanctuaries with a 
sufficient body to maintain worship. Now we are planting 
missions among this large unchurched population. But the 
original hold can never be recovered in this way. Move out 
your palace-cars from the assembled passengers, and then 
back in a cheaper train with a more economical service, and 
you need not be surprised to hear them say, ' No, thank you, 
we do not ride second-class.* So we do not doubt that a 
considerable number among the honest and decent middle 
class have been estranged from the sanctuary by this careless 
habit of church-moving, the tabernacle following those whom 
it most needs instead of staying with those who most need it." 
After describing some from his church who preach out 
of doors, he goes on to say : " These have led the way 
which I verily believe the ministry ought to follow. I have 
watched them going upon the Common, where thousands 
gather on a summer day, or upon the circus ground, thronged 
with an expectant crowd waiting for a show; and as they 
have lifted up their voices hundreds have gathered about and 
listened with utmost attention to their words. Here is a 
lesson. These people could not be drawn to church, but 
they listen when the church is brought to them ; and when the 
crowd disperses there is generally left a residuum of those 
who would like to hear further, and who, upon conversation, 
promise to meet the speaker at the church next Sabbath 
morning. What now if the great body of ordained preachers 
would go out each Sunday afternoon upon the commons and 
squares and public gardens and parks and tell the simple 
story of the gospel? I know of no solution of the problem, 
How shall our churches reach the masses? at once so simple 



122 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

and so practicable as this. And I would have each minister 
go as the pastor of his church. Let the people know that 
the church cares enough for them to send its ministers after 
them. 

" . . . We talk about the dangerous classes. The danger 
lies in the separation of the classes— those who are the salt of 
the earth keeping by themselves instead of coming into con- 
tact with that which tends to corruption. If the great mass 
of Christians would come into heart-to-heart relation with the 
so-called dangerous class much might be done to change its 
character. But here is where we fail. We have too many 
family churches and too few missionary churches. Custom is 
inexorable in its demands, and it is exceedingly difficult for 
us to admit the propriety or utility of side-tracks running off 
from the main lines of our ministry to reach the unprivileged. 
We praise God indeed that our Redeemer is one who can 
have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out 
of the way ; but how far we should go out of the way is quite 
another question. The regular thoroughfare can command 
unlimited capital for its extension, and no matter how costly 
the rolling-stock of quartet choirs, Gothic arches, memorial 
windows, and all that, the funds can generally be raised for 
it. But for an unsurveyed and unchartered extension into the 
highways and hedges it is always very difficult to get stock- 
holders. The reason is that we shrink from the unusual and 
the extraordinary. Fashion controls our religion very much 
as it controls the cut of our garments. The most grotesque 
styles are worn upon our backs if custom so order, and the 
most absurd contrivances of medieval art are sanctioned in 
our churches if they are laid down on the fashion-plate of 
ecclesiastical architecture. Custom is a pope whose bulls few 
have the courage to resist." 

On the 19th of December of this year Dr. Gordon spoke 
at the annual Forefathers' celebration in old Plymouth. The 



ON THE HIGHWAYS 123 

speakers were drawn from various professions and from all 
denominations, James Russell Lowell being the most distin- 
guished. There was there, as usual, a large contingent of the 
liberal stripe — as unconscious apparently of any incongruity 
in their celebration of the heroic faith of Puritanism as 
Romans of the Lower Empire might have been in honoring 
the fathers of the Twelve Tables. For the dry gravelly bed 
may indeed continue to believe itself the stream long after 
the cooling waters have sought other channels. To such 
Gordon's address seems largely directed : 

" I count myself highly honored in being called to partici- 
pate in the festivities of this occasion. For though I cannot 
trace my lineage, natural or ecclesiastical, to Plymouth Rock, 
in common with all New Englanders, I cherish a profound 
interest in its history and principles. You remember that in 
speaking of the rock which Moses smote in the wilderness to 
give water to the Israelites the Scriptures call it ' that spiritual 
rock which followed them/ Plymouth Rock does not remain 
in Plymouth alone ; it has followed the sons of the Pilgrims 
in all their migrations, its grain and grit wrought into their 
constitution, and rendering them the most stalwart race that 
has yet appeared on this continent. And without desiring 
that this noble rock should grow less, I do wish that a strong 
solution, a powerful tincture of it might be prepared and ad- 
ministered far and wide to those politicians without principle, 
to those civilians without conscience, and to those clergymen 
without creed, in which this generation so abounds. Then, 
perchance, observers like Ralph Waldo Emerson might not 
have to lament the ' dapper liberalities/ as he names them, 
which have rendered our generation so ' frivolous and ungirt as 
compared with the former and Puritan age.' 

" Mr. President, it was my fortune to be hatched ecclesi- 
astically on Roger Williams's rock, situated in Narragansett 
Bay. I would not say to the sons of the Puritans, ' Our rock 



124 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

is not as your rock.* It is as your rock, the same geological 
and theological formation. And while the adherents of the 
1 standing order ' are complaining that Plymouth Rock is dis- 
integrating and crumbling in the atmosphere of modern doubt 
and liberal thought, I am glad to say that our rock is as firm 
and compact as ever, so that we could undertake to furnish 
underpinning for any number of new churches and new States, 
provided the demand is for ' a church without a bishop and a 
state without a king.' And this suggests a theory of ecclesi- 
astical evolution which I have formulated, but have never 
before ventured to make public. The followers of Roger 
Williams, after two hundred and fifty years, have grown to 
two millions, and the principles of Roger Williams — soul- 
liberty and religious toleration — have been gradually appro- 
priated by all churches and governments till they have be- 
come almost universally accepted. This is certainly a re- 
markable triumph. How shall we account for it? Well, you 
remember that quaint old Thomas Fuller explains figuratively 
the wide-spread diffusion of the doctrines of Wickliffe, and 
that Wordsworth puts the same into verse, telling us how the 
reformers body was dug up and burned by his enemies, and 
how, his ashes being cast into the little brook, it bore them 

" ' Into the Avon ; Avon to the tide 

Of Severn ; Severn to the narrow seas ; 

Into main ocean they. . . . 

Thus the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified 

By truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed.' 

" It was even so with Roger Williams. He was buried on 
one of the slopes of Providence Hill. An apple-tree grew 
above his grave, spreading its branches widely and striking its 
roots deeply, and bearing year by year a heavy burden of 
fruit. How widely that fruit was scattered and eaten, how its 
seeds were diffused and reproduced here and there, I need 



ON THE II I G HIV AYS 125 

not conjecture. Suffice it to say that while a college student 
in that goodly city I saw the bones of Roger Williams dis- 
interred, and, strange to relate, it was discovered that the tap- 
root of that apple-tree had struck down and followed the 
whole length of the stubborn Baptist's spinal column, appro- 
priating and absorbing its substance till not a vestige of the 
vertebrae remained. And thus that invincible backbone of 
Roger Williams, whom a critical Massachusetts statesman 
stigmatized as ' contentiously conscientious/ was ' spread 
throughout the world dispersed/ and reproduced in genera- 
tions of his adherents. Blessed are they who are so for- 
tunate as to have their theology enriched by such strong 
phosphites. 

" But, Mr. President, I must not obtrude family issues into this 
most catholic celebration. More can truthfully be said to the 
praise of the worthies whose names we honor to-day than any 
of us shall have time to express. In the first place, of whom 
could it ever more truly be said that ' they builded better than 
they knew'? Who supposes they ever dreamed of the noble 
republic whose germ and principles they bore in the hold of 
the 'Mayflower'? They were simply dutiful servants of the 
Most High, not architects of their own fortunes ; and, like 
Abraham, they obeyed the voice of God and went out, not 
knowing whither they went, that they might inherit a land 
which he should afterward give them. Had they been mind- 
ful of that country whence they came out they might have 
had opportunity to return, but now they sought a better 
country, and God gave them one which far surpassed their 
thoughts. I remember to have read that, years after its com- 
pletion, General Jackson's campaign at New Orleans was 
sharply criticized in Congress, and Judge Douglass, in a 
masterly speech, vindicated it. Afterward meeting the judge, 
the general cordially thanked him, and said, ' I always knew 
that I was right in what I did at New Orleans, but I never 



126 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

knew why I was right until I read your speech.' The remark 
may awaken a smile, but there is something deeply philosophi- 
cal in it. The thinker must come after the actor to interpret 
his conduct for him. As the great master takes up some 
rude melody of the troubadour and sets it to music, so thinkers 
have to set to logic the deeds of the world's great actors. In- 
stinct is greater than reason, because it reads the mind of 
God, yet knows it not. It was a divine instinct which guided 
the helm of the ' Mayflower,' and it was a divine instinct 
which guided the footsteps of the Pilgrims to this spot ; and 
it is for us to-day to exult in the clear reasonableness of what 
they did. 

" In another sense, these forefathers were great thinkers, for 
they thought God's thoughts after him, careless of the con- 
tradiction which those thoughts might bring to our human 
logic. This was their intellectual heroism, that they believed 
God though they thereby made every man a liar. It is the 
fashion nowadays to admire the Puritan and decry Puritanism. 
But it was the doctrine that made the man, and not the man 
the doctrine. Iron in the thinker's brain is just as needful, if 
he is to grasp and master the dark problems of the universe, 
as iron in the blacksmith's blood is needful if he is to weld 
and mould the iron bar which he holds in his hand. And 
our Puritan fathers had the iron from the hills of eternal truth 
so wrought into their blood that they have sent down a cur- 
rent of stalwart convictions which a score of generations have 
not outgrown. May this be the lesson which we gain from 
our visit to this New England shrine to-day — that fidelity to 
God is the surest way of fidelity to man. The truest humanity 
is that which is born of the truest divinity. And therefore, if 
we would realize the prayer of George Fox, the Quaker — of 
being 'baptized into a sense of all conditions' — let us know 
that we must be baptized into God's truth as well as into 
God's love. This, then, shall be my closing sentiment : as the 



ON THE HIGHWAYS 



127 



Pilgrim fathers are marching on year by year in the culture 
and wealth and greatness which their sons have wrought out 
after them, may the Pilgrim sons fall back year by year upon 
the piety and virtue and conscience which their fathers wrought 
out before them." 



CHAPTER X 

THE " WATCHWORD » 
The establishment of the " Watchword "—Its aim, scope, and history 

FEW question the degeneracy of the American daily news- 
paper and the degrading influence which it exerts in our 
social system. It has become a hoarse-throated tale-monger, 
its output being not much better than an endlessly issued 
chronique scandal use. This for the news column. The edi- 
torial page also exhibits the most unworthy traits. The 
proverbial timidity of capital finds here its complete expres- 
sion. The daily paper would never for truth's sake offend 
the smallest fraction of its paying constituency. It is as cal- 
culating as those state-churchmen who, as Marx says, would 
give up the entire Thirty-nine Articles rather than one thirty- 
ninth of their income. It is ever heard "bawling forth judg- 
ments unashamed all day long," and these judgments are 
shaped notoriously by the counting-room. The result, of 
course, is the extreme of unreliability and a proneness to 
darken the counsel of the " leader" by words without con- 
viction. 

This decadence of the secular press has been a standing in- 
vitation to religious weeklies to assume a leadership and to 
acquire a confidence which the daily paper has long since 
forfeited. They have the more naturally taken upon them- 
selves this leadership inasmuch as the receding emphasis laid 
on denominational distinctions has, in some degree, atrophied 

128 



THE "WATCHWORD" 129 

a former function and given them scope for the new work. 
But this important and valuable service has deflected attention 
from a still more necessary and too easily neglected line of 
teaching. We find very little stimulus to the culture of the 
inner life in the average religious weekly. It is occupied with 
exterior church life, with missions, education, the affairs of 
the denomination, and, in an increasing ratio, with the news 
of the whole swinging globe. 

This semi-secularization of the religious press and the clear 
need of some publication entirely given up to the things of 
the closet led Gordon to issue, in the fall of 1878, an unob- 
trusive little monthly devoted wholly to the spiritual life. The 
name adopted was the " Watchword," and the motto at the 
head of the first page read : " Watch ye : stand fast in the 
faith. Let all things be done with charity." 

The first number began with a commentary upon these 
words, into which was woven a statement of the purpose of the 
undertaking. After remarking upon the apparent hardihood 
involved in the launching of another religious paper, he says : 

" The primitive faith is proclaimed by a great multitude 
both of preachers and of papers, but as there can never be too 
many engaged in setting forth the doctrines of grace, we may 
be welcomed in undertaking the same work with methods 
somewhat different from those in general use. We propose to 
make use of Bible readings and brief Scripture expositions and 
narrations of personal experiences of the work of grace, thus 
presenting the doctrines of grace biblically rather than theo- 
logically, experimentally rather than controversially. 

" The primitive hope we believe to be sadly obscured and 
neglected by the great mass of Christians in our day. That 
hope in the apostolic age was the personal reappearing of the 
Lord from heaven — 'looking for that blessed hope, and the 
glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus 
Christ.' To the first disciples this event was imminent and 



130 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

inspiring, and constituted the most powerful motive to activity 
and consecration. But so dark is the eclipse into which this 
hope has been thrown that its avowal is almost certain, now- 
adays, to bring down upon one the charge of fanaticism. 
Braving that charge and rejoicing profoundly in the wonder- 
ful awakening to this truth which the last twenty-five years 
have witnessed, we shall have much to say upon it and upon 
closely related topics. 

" The primitive charity we may in slight measure illustrate 
and magnify if in the discussion of these and kindred themes 
we shall exhibit that forbearance toward those who differ from 
us which we conceive to be according to the spirit of Christ. 
Here is a field, certainly, which offers magnificent possibilities. 
There is a commendable zeal for soundness in the faith among 
many of our religious journals. But in the sharp contention 
for the faith once delivered to the saints many think they 
hear too often the clash of carnal weapons. Soundness in the 
faith by all means, but let us not forget the injunction of the 
apostle that we should 'be sound in faith, in charity, in 
patience.* 'The heart is the best theologian/ it has been 
said ; and also, we may add, the worst heretic when it de- 
fends the truth in uncharity and bitterness." 

The temper of the new publication was deeply Christian and 
pietistic. How well the editor succeeded in giving practical 
expression to the last article of the above program is well 
known by all who ever read the paper. There was, however, 
no loud profession of undenominational charity. The stereo- 
typed formulas of comprehension were altogether wanting 
here. The spirit of fellowship with all Christians was too 
deep and its current too calmly powerful to indulge in frothy 
and declamatory phrases. 

In fact, the line of cleavage followed quite other than de- 
nominational lines. It was transverse, grouping associates 
and contributors from all churches, whose main bond of 



THE "WATCHWORD" 131 

fellowship seemed to be the love of the Lord's appearing. 
W. S. Rainsford, Professor Duffield of Princeton, S. H. Tyng, 
Jr., George C. Needham, and W. L. Mackay of Hull, Eng- 
land, were among the contributors— a pledge of able and 
catholic management. Its clientele was extensive among that 
diaspora of patient and loving souls who, in distant hamlet 
and in crowded city, walk through life with the upward gaze, 
cherishing "the hope." To them it was a silent, freshening 
influence, like the hidden springs and veins of water which 
percolate from the mount of vision. It was in its editorial 
writing edifying, full of sober, lucid reflection, providing that 
soul-nourishment, that bread which the world knows not of. 
It was full of meaty expositions of Scripture, quaint, yet not 
fantastic, bearing always the mark of deep insight and singu- 
larly luminous in expression. Short sketches of the lives of 
saints, of missionaries, and of martyrs served as encouragement 
to those whose lives seemed hopelessly environed with com- 
monplace. There were frequent quotations, too, from those 
wonderfully quaint and unfailingly apposite unfolders of the 
Word, the Puritan divines of the Commonwealth. He must 
have been a careless reader indeed who has not seen, at one 
time or another, the faces of Marshall and of Brook, of 
Gurnall, of John Owen, of Thomas Manton, of Joseph Alleine, 
peering through the print of these columns. 

There was, in the earlier years, a special column for minis- 
ters, replete with mingled admonition and encouragement. It 
was here that Dr. Gordon sought to deepen the sense of re- 
sponsibility and to lay bare the secrets of power, to stimulate 
hunger for souls and to inculcate interest in the whole world 
in those who were being narrowed by the centripetal tendency 
of parochial duties. 

The undertaking was not begun without misgiving on the 
part of friends and family. To the bantering remark that 
every little minister sought, as his ultimate ambition, to have 



132 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

an "organ," he would reply that he felt as clearly called to 
this work as to the ministry. It is difficult to express what it 
cost in every direction. It was conducted in quiet defiance 
of mercantile principles. He spoke of much of the writing 
which appears in religious weeklies, flanked by columns of 
questionable advertising, as giving the impression of an in- 
valid limping between crutches. Advertisement, as diverting 
attention from the purely devotional tone of the paper, and 
as suggestive of money-making, was therefore discarded. For 
many years the enterprise was conducted at a financial loss. 
The expense in labor, care, and personal attention was in- 
computable, but very real and very great. The experience of 
hymn-book making had left Gordon with a peculiar nervous 
weakness which made the preparation of copy almost the 
severest work in which he could engage. The Monday morn- 
ings devoted to this work were the most painfully laborious 
days in the year. " Our aim," he remarks, "is to do our ut- 
most in opening the Word of God and leading our readers 
into evangelical truth. So far the effort has not, of course, 
paid financially, but, what is far better, it has cost. Time, 
pains, money, and labor have been freely given. With the 
multitude of religious sheets which go forth every week, it will 
still be a question with many whether ours is called for. Each 
reader must now decide that question for himself." And 
then he adds characteristically, "We do not propose, as the 
manner of some is, to print the letters of commendation which 
we have received. That would seem to us like egotism. AVe 
do not believe that there is any ' editorial we ' large enough 
to hide a man's shame when he gets behind it to praise him- 
self, or to read in solemn falsetto the compliments which 
others have passed upon him. The injunction, ' Let another 
praise thee, and not thine own lips/ is certainly violated when 
we repeat another's praises in an assumed tone or in a changed 
voice." 



CHAPTER XI 

TRUTH AND COUNTERFEIT 

Christian Science — Its genesis and doctrine — Dr. Gordon's indictment 
of it — Healing by faith — Remarkable answers to prayer in Dr. Gor- 
don's experience 

THE early eighties saw the rise and development of a new 
delusion in that city which has proved, spite of its claim 
to the highest culture, so prolific in such growths. " Christian 
Science " is the misnomer by which it goes. Its Christianity 
has in it more of parody than of actuality. Of science, in the 
accepted sense of the word, there is not even what the chem- 
ists call a trace. This is clear from a cursory reading of its 
text-book, " Science and Health/' a work nebulous to the 
point of mystification, badly written, and bearing in its own 
body its self-evidencing refutation. The spring of this super- 
stition is, we are inclined to believe, in "transcendentalism." 
We recognize the old Emersonian " pass " of the hand, the 
worn trick of subjectivism, in the declaration, for example, 
that " decaying flower, withering grass, blighted and gnarled 
oak, ferocious beasts, sicknesses of all sorts and all qualities, 
are but the falsities of matter, the changing images of mortal 
mind; not in reality substance, but only belief in it." The 
elusive opinions of the Concord philosophy running under- 
ground here come to the surface again, muddy, defiled, yet 
recognizable. For Gnosticism runs through the same cycle 
in Boston as in Alexandria. Thaumaturgy ends in theurgy, 
Iamblichus succeeds Plotinus, Mrs. Eddy follows Emerson 
and Alcott. 

133 



134 ADONIRAM JUDSOX GORDON 

These delusions have their rise and fall like the trajectory 
of an arrow, reaching the heights of popular interest only to 
drop finally into obscurity and neglect. It was so with spirit- 
ism, whose great, gloomy fane still towers on a prominent 
Boston thoroughfare, though the influence of its uncanny 
creed is now a thing of the past. It must be so shortly with 
this new wonder-working system. For, as if its own claims 
to be an inspired commentary on Jesus' words— a new reve- 
lation again " opened to humanity after a long night of mate- 
rialism (i.e., nineteen centuries) through the spiritual under- 
standing," a new apocalypse as pretentious as that of Sweden- 
borg or of the Utah Saints— were not enough to confute and 
destroy it, it has, in later years, developed a curious special 
cultus of which the author of "Science and Health" seems 
to be the subject. Her words are given equal authority with 
those of Jesus himself, if one may judge by the impartiality 
with which quotations from her book alternate with those 
from the New Testament on the walls of the " First Church 
of Christ, Scientist." As priestess of the new dispensation, 
and as revealer of the arcana, she is reverenced with almost 
Delphic honors. The black haircloth rocking-chair in which 
her book was written is an object of veneration by the sect. 
The very plumbing of her boudoir has been gold-plated, while 
her apartments have been decorated by her followers with an 
elegance worthy of Schoenbrunn or Balmoral, and comically 
suggestive of Hood's lines : 

" Only propose to blow a bubble, 
And Lord! what thousands will subscribe for soap!" 

Surely the next phase of the movement must be dissolution. 
There can be nothing beyond! 

In the April " Congregationalist " of 1885 appeared a long 
article by Gordon, which, circulated later by the thousand 
in pamphlet form, proved an effective antitoxin for the cure 






TRUTH AND COUNTERFEIT 



135 



of this wide-spread malady. The clogged, heavy, illogical 
style, weighted with a pseudo-philosophical phraseology, is cut 
through and through by this keen little pamphlet, clear and 
clean as a rapier, till nothing remains of the system but wav- 
ing, torn shreds. Its subjective and unwarrantable quotations 
of Scripture are exposed. This in itself was no hard task, 
however, for the unreality and falsity of this new mongrel 
idealism lies bare and naked upon every page of its text-book. 

The pamphlet is entitled " Christian Science tested by 
Scripture." From it we make these excerpts : 

" Whatever results this system may effect in healing the 
body, it has given grounds for the suspicion that, as affecting 
the heart, it is a system of spiritual malpractice and is leading 
its subjects away from the simple faith of the gospel into a 
vague and transcendental misbelief. It is indeed an insidious 
delusion. Its large use of the Bible, its strenuous demand for 
holiness and self-abnegation in its disciples, the results appa- 
rently effected in its ministry to the sick — these are powerful 
considerations for attracting converts by giving them the im- 
pression that they are getting some finer quality of Christianity. 
Its philosophy, briefly stated, is this : Evil is not ; sin, sick- 
ness, and death are unreal ; ' matter and the mortal body are 
nothing but a belief and illusion ; ' l there is neither a personal 
Deity, a personal devil, nor a personal man.' Let us test these 
propositions by Scripture. 



Christian Science 

Jesus never ransomed man by- 
paying the debt that sin incurs ; 
whosoever sins must suffer. — II., 
189. 



Sin is not forgiven ; we cannot 
escape its penalty. — II., 165. 



Holy Scripture 

In whom we have redemption 
through his blood, even the forgive- 
ness of sins. — Col. i. 14. 



If we confess our sins, he is faith- 
ful and just to forgive us our sins, 
and to cleanse us from all unright- 
eousness. — 1 John i. 9. 



136 



ADOKIRAM JUDSON GORDON 



Christian Science 

Petitioning a personal Deity is 
a misapprehension of the source 
and means of all good and blessed- 
ness ; therefore it cannot be bene- 
ficial. — II., 170. 

Asking God to pardon sin is a 
vain repetition such as the heathen 
use. Habitual goodness is praying 
without ceasing. — II., 173. 

The belief that man has a sepa- 
rate life or soul from God is the 
error that Jesus came to destroy. — 

11., 90. 

Science decides matter or the 
mortal body to be nothing but a 
belief and an illusion. — II., 193. 



Man is coeternal and coexistent 
with God, and they are inseparable 
in divine science. — I., 173. 



Holy Scripture 

In everything by prayer and sup- 
plication with thanksgiving let 
your requests be made known unto 
God.— Phil. iv. 6. 



For thy name's sake pardon 
mine iniquity. — David, Ps. xxv. 1 1. 

And forgive us our sins. — Luke 
xi. 4. 

From everlasting to everlasting 
thou art God. — Ps. xc. 2. 

The soul that sinneth, it shall 
die. — Ezek. xviii. 20. 

Let not sin therefore reign in 
your mortal body. — Rom. vi. 12. 

He shall also quicken your mor- 
tal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth 
in you. — Rom. viii. II. 

So God created man in his own 
image, in the image of God created 
he him. — Gen. i. 27. 



\ 



" Beyond these palpable contradictions of the Word of 
God, we must confess also the shock which it gives to hear 
Jesus constantly spoken of as a metaphysician and demon- 
strator of Christian Science — ' the most scientific man that 
ever trod the globe ;' to be told that the cause of his agony in 
the garden was that he was touched with ' the utter error of a 
belief of life in matter ' ; that on the cross he was giving the 
world ' an example and proof of divine science ' ; that his 
Christianity ' destroyed sin, sickness, and death because it was 
metaphysics, and denied personal sense, bore the cross, and 
reached the right hand of a perfect principle. ' . . . 

" Every text-book which we have examined on the subject 
brings this art of healing into acknowledged connection with 
pantheistic and Buddhistic principles. The mind which acts 






TRUTH AND COUNTERFEIT 137 

on mind is irreverently confounded with the eternal Mind. 
For example, in 'The. Primitive Mind Cure,' by W. F. 
Evans, the author, after quoting one who declares that an 
idea directed upon the seat of a supposed ailment causes a 
stream of nervous energy to flow toward the secreting organ, 
says : ' This nervous energy I prefer to call the universal, 
divine life-principle in nature, the akasa of the Hindu meta- 
physics, an all-pervading, omnipresent, vivific principle of life 
and motion, identical in its higher aspects with the Holy Spirit 
of the gospels/ This we call pantheism of the most revolting 
type, a confounding of the third person of the blessed Trinity 
with a secretion of the nerves. In this book, too, is evolu- 
tionism of a very profane sort. 'As the cabala expresses it, 
the mineral becomes a plant, the plant an animal, the animal 
a man, and man becomes divine. This is the divine Man, 
the Christ of Paul, at the same time a divine personage and a 
universal, humanized principle of life and light/ After tell- 
ing us that the Christ is the ' universal spirit/ the ' all-pervad- 
ing, divine presence/ it is declared that, 'owing to the un- 
exampled spiritual evolution of the man Jesus, his individual 
life became merged and blended into unity with the Only- 
Begotten of the Father, the universal Christ.' All this and 
much more of the same quality there is, which we would not 
quote except to warn Christians who are swallowing without 
suspicion this book and others of the same family. It is a 
sort of witches' caldron, in which every conceivable heathen 
and Christian heresy is found seething and simmering to pro- 
duce the subtle essence called 'mental medicine.' 

" Now, reading in a work lies like this, and seeing on almost 
every page its connection with theosophy, esoteric Buddhism, 
cabalism, and pantheism, the roots of these doctrines all the 
while being so artlessly entwined with apparently devout and 
reverent exposition of Scripture as to deceive the very elect ; 
and then turning to the metaphysical healers who are going 



138 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

to their patients, some of them, at least, filled with the evil 
philosophy of this manual, and winning such reputed suc- 
cess as to have caused a rare stir in our country, what shall 
we say? 

"We say two things, viz., that there may be some psychic 
force here, mind-contagion or what not, which experts can 
show to account for the whole matter ; or there may be some- 
thing deeper. For us, we have the strongest conviction of 
the existence of a personal devil, not omnipotent, but endowed 
with an infernal ingenuity. It has been his steady policy 
either to parody Christianity by inventing spurious imitations, 
or to adulterate it with such heathen mixtures as to ' turn the 
truth of God into a lie.' The literature of Christian Science 
presents clearly enough such a pagan adulteration of the re- 
ligion of Christ ; and we greatly fear that ' the prince of the 
power of the air ' may be appropriating and reinforcing what- 
ever occult principle of healing there may be in this system, 
and using it to accredit his own gospel. 

" It will be hardly necessary, after what has been said, to 
distinguish 'Christian Science' from the ' prayer of faith,' 
which is said in Scripture to 'save the sick.' No one who 
believes this promise or makes use of it has ever, so far as we 
know, considered that its fulfilment depends on the action 
of mind upon mind. All who credit ' faith-cures,' as they 
are sometimes called, hold that they are the result of God's 
direct and supernatural action upon the body of the sufferer. 
1 Christian Science ' pointedly denies the efficacy of prayer for 
the recovery of the sick. It says : { Asking God to heal the 
sick has no effect to gain the ear of love, beyond its ever 
presence. The only beneficial effect it has is mind acting on 
the body through a stronger faith to heal it ; but this is one 
belief casting out another— a belief in a personal God casting 
out a belief in sickness, and not giving the understanding of 
the principle that heals.' ('Science and Health,' ii., 171.) 



TRUTH AND COUNTERFEIT 1 39 

Here the antagonism between two things that differ is so 
marked that we only need to call attention to it. 

" All this we have written from no love of controversy and 
from no personal ill will toward those whom we criticize, but 
for the warning of Christians, lest they be beguiled away from 
the simplicity that is in Christ. Let such as would abide in 
the truth give heed to the clear denials of Scripture indicated 
in the quotations above ; and then remember the warnings of 
St. Paul to avoid the 'oppositions of science falsely so called: 
which some professing have erred concerning the faith. ,' And 
when this science talks about Jesus Christ's ' stipposed life in 
?natter] let them remember that some in the days of St. John 
spoke precisely thus — ' Gnostics ' or ' scientists ' they were called 
—and that of them the gentle apostle is supposed to have writ- 
ten when he said, ' For many deceivers are entered into the 
world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. 
This is a deceiver and an antichrist.'. And finally, remember- 
ing the saying of Calvin, which accords with Scripture and the 
universal testimony of the early church, that ' Satan perverts the 
things which otherwise are truly works of God, and misemploys 
miracles to obscure the glory of God,' let us, with sober watch- 
fulness, pray daily as our Lord has taught us (R. V.), ' Lead 
us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One.' " 

" Bar-Jesus the sorcerer forever dogs the steps of Christ 
Jesus the healer as he walks through the sick-wards of the 
world," wrote Gordon later, "and whoever encounters his 
satanic miracles should infer that the Lord is not far off per- 
forming gracious works through the prayers and faith of his 
servants." The charlatanry of spiritualism and Christian Sci- 
ence, as well as Romish appeals to bones and vestments and 
shrines, was, he believed, the devil's travesty upon a vital truth. 
That these wrought cures he did not deny, for " all power " * is 

* " Whose coming is . . . with all power and signs and lying wonders " 
(2 Thess. ii. 9). 



14° ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

ascribed to the adversary. The impulse, however, of which 
these cures were an expression he believed to be from below, 
its purpose being the exaltation of evil systems to the dis- 
credit of God's supernatural workings. " God never puts a 
man upon the stage that Satan does not immediately bring 
forward an ape." * " Yet let us not abandon our wheat-field," 
Gordon would say, " because the devil has sown tares. The 
fact that he sows tares is his testimony to the genuineness of 
the wheat." 

"The Ministry of Healing," published somewhat before 
this time, discusses the subject at length from his point of 
view. Miracles occurred in apostolic times. They occurred 
subsequently, according to patristic testimony. With the 
periodical renaissance of vigorous religious life in such move- 
ments as Pietism, Methodism, etc., have come almost invari- 
ably the same manifestations of God's willingness to heal. 
The tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the 
nations, bears its fruit every month. " The test is, ' if thou 
believest/ not if thou wast born in Palestine and within the 
limits of the first Christian century." In the early church 
healing by faith as enjoined by James seems to have been a 
sacrament pointing forward to the restitution and renewal of 
mankind, as baptism symbolized the resurrection, and as the 
communion pointed to the coming of Christ. " But while 
the prayer of faith which saves us is the simplest exercise of 
the heart, the p~ayer of faith which saves the sick is the most 
exacting." This being so, the practice fell largely into disuse, 
the only suggestion of it which survives in formal ecclesiasti- 
cal life being extreme unction, " wherein an ordinance for life 
is perverted into an ordinance for death." 

He was inclined to believe further that Jesus endured 
vicariously our sicknesses f as well as our sins, and also that 
" the restoration of the sick in Chrises ministry was an enacted 

* Godet. t Matt. viii. 17. 



TRUTH AND COUNTERFEIT 141 

prediction of the final redemption of the body, a pulse-beat 
from the heart of him who is the resurrection and the life, giving 
a slight foretaste of our full recovery at his appearing and king- 
dom." Of this he felt the striking words in Hebrews to be 
premonitory where Christians are spoken of as those who 
have tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the age 
to come. " The age to come," said he, " is the resurrection 
age, the time of the redemption of the body. We know the 
powers of that age not simply by prediction and promise, but 
by experience. Every miracle is a foretaste thereof, a sign of 
its universal healing and restitution. The driftwood and float- 
ing vegetation which met the eye of Columbus as he was 
keeping lookout upon his ship assured him of his proximity 
to the new world which he was seeking. His study of geog- 
raphy had convinced him of the existence of that world. 
But now he tasted its powers ; he saw and handled its actual 
first-fruits. So it is with us voyagers to the world to come, 
the millennial age, and time of the restitution of all things. 
As those who have known and credited our Lord's miracles 
while on earth, or have experienced the wonders of recovery 
which he has wrought as he still stretches out his hand to heal, 
we have tasted the powers of the coming age." 

" Miracles of healing " he characterized, therefore, as " mani- 
festations of nature's perfect health, lucid intervals granted 
to our deranged and suffering humanity ; not catastrophes, but 
exhibitions of that divine order which shall be brought in when 
redemption is completed " in the resurrection. That those 
who spiritualize into thin air the New Testament teaching of 
the resurrection of the body should deride the possibility of 
bodily healing by faith in Christ was not surprising to him. 
The denial of the greater includes the denial of the less. He 
was wont to remark on the grim irony of the fact that in the 
history of the church, when the departure of the spirit at death 
began to be confused with the return of Christ with resurrec- 



142 AD0N1RAM JUDSON GORDON 

tion powers, we should then first find miracles of healing 
alleged by contact with the bones of dead saints and martyrs 
instead of miracles of healing through the prayer of faith 
offered to the living Christ. The current sentimental estimate 
which makes of death not " the last enemy," but a good angel, 
a messenger of release, finds its counterpart in the opinion 
which describes death's adjutant, sickness, as a servant of the 
Most High. To an article which contended that the miracles 
of cure recorded in the New Testament were for those on a 
lower plane, and that others, like Paul, of finer organization 
can have a fuller spiritual life in bodily weakness than in good 
health, he replied : 

"We appeal to experience, and ask whether our readers 
have found it easier to maintain communion with God when 
they have been prostrated with illness and racked with pain 
than when they have been in buoyant health. We have found 
just the opposite to be true— that sickness and debility are a 
great drawback to devotion. We appeal to Scripture again, 
and ask whether, because Paul's thorn in the flesh was over- 
ruled to his spiritual chastening, he did not nevertheless speak 
the truth when he called it a messenger of Satan. An old 
writer says, ' The Lord often sharpens his saints on the devil's 
grindstone.' This we admit most fully ; but we do not there- 
fore advise that that grindstone be set up as a part of the 
furniture of the Lord's house. We question not that out- 
breaking sin is often overruled for the final salvation of the 
offender, as in the case of one who declared in a public ad- 
dress that had he never been a drunkard he probably should 
never have become a Christian. His statement can be readily 
credited ; yet we would not recommend drunkenness as a pre- 
paratory dispensation to grace, for sin is of the devil. In a 
word, we must distinguish between what our Lord overrules 
and what he ordains. If in his vast mercy he thwarts the Evil 
One, making sin and sickness work to our good, we must not 



TRUTH AXD COUNTERFEIT 143 

therefore sanctify these things into an ordinance, lest we make 
Christ the minister of sin." 

Curiously enough, while prayer for the sick is almost the 
commonest form of petition among Christians, a belief in the 
efficacy of such prayer and in the direct answer to the call for 
healing is freely scouted as fanaticism. " Therefore we need," 
said Gordon, " less praying for the sick rather than more ; 
only the less should be real and deep and intelligent and be- 
lieving." The divine help is not to be invoked lightly or as a 
substitute for God's natural provision in medicine and hygiene. 
Nor is it a grace for those without depth of spiritual life or 
for those with whom exercise in prayer is not habitual and 
prevailing. Yet if the superior faith of prophets and apostles 
is brought forward to discourage this practice it should still be 
remembered that to the injunction in James to " pray one for 
another, that ye may be healed," is added a significant note 
on the powerfully effective prayers of Elias, " a man subject to 
like passions as we are" 

To the objection that prayers for the sick are often, ap- 
parently, unanswered, he replied with a disarming hi quoque. 
" Holding such views as we Christians do," he would say, " in 
regard to the efficacy of prayer for the conversion of souls, and 
resting on the plain declaration of God our Saviour that he 
will have all men saved, how can we explain the fact that the 
mass of men go down to death unreconciled to God? We 
must remember both Melita and Miletum. In one place Paul 
healed the father of Publius by his prayers ; in the other he 
left Trophimus sick." 

He realized, nevertheless, the great perplexities in the whole 
matter. " I have little to say in regard to the principles of 
divine healing," he says in a letter, " but am looking constantly 
for light. It is a subject full of difficulties, and I shrink more 
and more from undertaking any philosophy of it. I do my 
best with every case which comes before me." 



144 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

When the sick sought him out he prayed with them in 
quietness and reserve. Many remarkable answers were 
vouchsafed. The statements of some of the healed are sub- 
joined : 

Rev. Joseph C. Young, Boston, Mass. : 

"In 1887 there appeared a growth on my lip. When first 
noticed it was very small, but gradually increased until it seri- 
ously interfered with my preaching. A physician of good stand- 
ing, after two examinations, told me that it was cancer and that 
I had better put my house in order, as he believed I had only a 
short time to live. Though believing in healing by faith, I had 
no appropriating faith to claim the promise/^r myself, yet I con- 
stantly sought divine guidance. For a week I had no light. 
At the end of this time the promise in James v. 14 came into 
my mind like a new revelation. I had read and quoted it to 
others hundreds of times, but now it came direct to me with 
an indescribable force. I believed it immediately. Then 
came a perplexity— who were the elders of the church? Who 
could offer the prayer of faith for me? I knew many in 
Brooklyn, my home, and in New York, who professed faith 
in this promise, but I had no inclination to call them. I 
made the matter a subject of special prayer for some days, 
and the name of Dr. Gordon, with whom I was only slightly 
acquainted, was so vividly thrust into my mind that I accepted 
it as an answe: to my prayer. The appointment was made 
to meet him in Boston with Mr. McElwain and Dr. Peck. I 
told them why I had come, and asked if they could take the 
promise in James and pray in faith for my healing. They re- 
plied that they could, and Dr. Gordon prayed, anointing me 
according to the instructions. I was in the study only a short 
time, and went away almost immediately after the prayer. I 
had no more pain or trouble from the cancer, and within a 
few weeks all signs of it had disappeared. It has never re- 
turned. The promise was believed, the prayer was offered, I 



TRUTH AND COUNTERFEIT 145 

was healed. ... I give this testimony with some reluctance. 
It is not a subject to be too much advertised. The Spirit 
heals according to the will of God, not according to our will. 
There has been too much fleshly formulating of theories on 
this as on all other teachings of the Bible, and for that reason 
less of the power of God manifested." 

Mr. Mial Davis, a lumber-merchant of Fitchburg, Mass., 
writes : 

" Next to my conversion, the divine healing in the study of 
dear Dr. Gordon was the most remarkable experience of my 
life. In 1889 I was prostrated. The right thigh seemed to 
lose its vitality to such a degree that it seemed for a time im- 
possible to bring life back to it. Some of my friends wished 
to remove me to the Massachusetts General Hospital to see if 
amputation could not save me. I said no ; I was ready to 
die. Years of prostration followed. At intervals I could go 
about with crutch or cane ; at other times I was confined to 
my bed. I could do little or nothing at my business. My 
mind finally turned to the study of healing by faith. After 
correspondence I forced myself, in great weakness, on 
crutches to Dr. Gordon's study. He laid his hand upon my 
heart and, oh, what a prayer for my recovery, what pleading 
with God! Brother McElwain's prayer followed, then my 
own poor prayer. Oh, what a miniature transfiguration of 
Jesus was there! The very place was holy ground. That 
was the day of days to me. You probably know how I went 
' walking and leaping, praising God/ I rose from my knees 
after all of us had prayed, went out on the sidewalk to go to 
the depot. I felt that new life had come to my knee and 
limb from thigh to foot. I walked up and down the cars 
while on my way home, praising God and giving him the 
glory. I had worn rubber bands round my knee, leg, and 
ankle, but the next morning I did not put them on and never 
have worn them since. My crutches and cane were laid aside. 



1 46 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

I have been able to do far more church work and business 
than ever I expected to do. . . ." 

Miss Emma Davis, Southboro, Mass., writes : 
" I suffered for years from seasons of utter prostration and 
acute suffering, with insomnia frequent and prolonged. My 
left side was a little, weak, shrunken thing, and my spine was 
badly curved, the right side being much too large and bowed. 
A few years since, when my attention was called to the Lord's 
healing, I was about as full of unbelief and prejudice as one 
could be. But prejudice began to melt away under the light 
of the Word, and I began to believe that possibly I might be 
helped. I consecrated myself to God as never before, dear 
friends prayed earnestly in my behalf, and, as fully as I knew 
how, I placed my case in the hands of the great Physician. 
For a while I was better. Then new ills came upon me until 
it seemed at times as though my very reason would leave me. 
. . . About this time I was most definitely led to write to 
Dr. Gordon. An interview followed. He seemed fearful lest 
I should fix my faith on the human agency instead of on the 
divine. He said most emphatically, ' I have no power.' 
'But,' repled I, 'you have faith in the One who has.' He 
smiled, and asked some very searching questions as to my 
faith to receive, as to consecration, and the use of God-given 
health. 

" He appointed a day when he would with others pray with 
me for my healing. When I came to his study I was suffer- 
ing intensely. With others he prayed for me, placing his 
hands on my head. I felt no change. Reaching home, I 
was soon prostrated with the old misery, suffering terribly 
night and day for nearly two weeks, but over and over again 
came to me the words, 'Fear not, only believe ;' and there 
was a deep stillness and peace in my soul, beyond anything I 
had ever experienced. The trial of faith was fiery, but I 
knew deliverance was near. One morning about the middle 



TRUTH AXD COUNTERFEIT 147 

of April I woke without a pain in my body, and, as I then 
expressed it, i they are all carried away into the wilderness.' 
With a new song in my heart, even praises to God, and with 
faithful promises, I rose up to serve anywhere the Lord might 
indicate. It is now almost four years, and I have had no 
return of my old pains or sickness. The change in my de- 
formity is most marked. All the pads and artificial means of 
relief are dispensed with. . . . Until my healing I was always 
over-tired, and the more tired the more pain and insomnia. 
Now no matter how much I exert myself I wake fresh and 
rested in the mornings. . . . Can any one explain away this 
sudden lifting of nearly thirty years' misery? " 

Mrs. Gertrude Floyd Cole (deceased), — statement of hus- 
band : 

"She was a fragile girl from her youth up, a few days at 
school being sufficient to exhaust her for weeks. Yet she was 
ever a person of great piety and of a pronounced spiritual 
life. Coming to Boston, she found work as a sewing- woman. 
The confinement brought on consumption of the most malig- 
nant type, accompanied by severe hemorrhages. The physi- 
cian pronounced her case hopeless. Dr. Gordon, on one of 
his visits, the last preceding his departure to the country, con- 
versed with the dying girl. He asked her if she could rely 
on the Lord Jesus Christ to raise her up, human aid having 
done all in its power. She said that she could, and that 
henceforth she surrendered herself to Christ. He prayed the 
prayer of faith as recorded in James, and left her in God's 
hands. She abandoned medicine, but sank beyond all indi- 
cations of life, and was pronounced to have passed away. She 
did indeed pass into the world of eternal life, and heard that 
which cannot be recorded other than that she was told that 
her life-work was not yet complete. While the attendants 
were making ready for her burial, she showed signs of return- 
ing life. From that hour her hemorrhages ceased and a warm 



148 ADONIRAM JUDSOX GORDON 

and grateful healing sensation permeated her lungs, and she 
was raised to health. Dr. Gordon, on returning from the 
country in the fall, met her on the street and did not know 
her, so perfectly had she recovered. This was his first inti- 
mation of her healing. She lived many years, married, en- 
gaged in Christian work, and died finally, though not of con- 
sumption." 



CHAPTER XII 



AMONG STUDENTS 



The Princeton College meetings — Difficulties met and overcome— Contact 
with President McCosh— Work at other colleges 

IN the opening weeks of 1884 a door to new opportunities 
and new activities was opened. Dr. James McCosh, the 
venerable president of Princeton College, had heard of Dr. 
Gordon through his Northfield labors and wrote urging him 
to come to Princeton, there to undertake special religious 
work among the students. The field was new and untried, 
and of especial difficulty and delicacy withal. Few will 
question the natural tendency to levity which prevails in a 
student community. Youth, freedom from home restraints, 
the contagion of diverse acquaintance, and the ignorance of 
those severe and disillusioning experiences of maturer years 
combine to make a product almost inaccessible to sober and 
religious influences. There were, furthermore, exceptional 
circumstances which, all unknown to the visitor, worked 
greatly to his prejudice and disadvantage. Take the train to 
Manhattan Field, New York, any day when the bill-boards 
announce some special intercollegiate fete. Listen to the 
hoarse cheering, rising like the surf of the Atlantic. Watch 
the waving colors, the excited thousands, the gladiatorial 
struggle over a pigskin foot-ball. It is on such occasions, if 
ever, that college students occupy a large place in the public 
eye. How irritated they would be if kept home and packed 

149 



150 ADOKIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

off en masse to college chapel ! Yet this was very much the 
case with the discontented, angry youths who, by some recent 
and perverse enactment, found themselves gathered to hear 
an unknown preacher from Boston at the very hour upon 
which they had pitched for some gala festival of athleticism. 
That the preacher enjoyed the service quite as little as the 
boys themselves is seen from the following letter : 

" Princeton, N. J., February 4, 1884. 
" My dear Wife : I will give you a little account of the 
work, thanking God for what he has graciously given. The 
first day was the toughest experience I have ever had. The 
students have been free, hitherto, to come to the prayer-day 
services or not — they have largely chosen not to come — till 
this year their attendance was made compulsory. My first 
address was to this compelled crowd, many of them disgusted 
that their holiday had been turned into a holy day. They sat 
before me facing at all angles, ogling and squirming and 
showing pla'nly enough that they did not propose to be 
solemnized. I was never so taken off my pins in my life. I 
sweat and floundered about and made an utter fizzle. All 
the grave and dignified faculty sat ranged on either side. I 
came home and dried my clothes and went back to the even- 
ing service with fear and trembling. That was not compul- 
sory, and I got on much better. Still, I was so discouraged 
that I determined to start for home on Friday morning. But 
I feel that the Lord overruled my rash purpose. A large 
delegation of students, who appreciated exactly the trial 
under which I had labored, came to see me, and insisted that 
I should stay. I consented, and began to visit the young 
men at their rooms. Sunday morning I preached again be- 
fore students and faculty. There was a great change ; no 
compulsion, but all were out and very attentive. In the 
afternoon again deeply solemn meeting. The good old pres- 



AMONG STUDENTS 151 

ident arose and made a most solemn appeal, saying, ' Young 
men, you have heard the gospel to-day so plainly declared 
that you are without excuse if you do not accept Christ.' 

" In the evening the students who were Christians planned 
for meetings in their rooms, inviting those in their respective 
halls to come in. I started at seven o'clock to visit these 
meetings. I found them all crowded. In the first one I 
struck, ten rose at my invitation to indicate their purpose to 
follow Christ. I went from building to building among the 
meetings, finding in almost every one those who were ready 
to stand up. I visited six of these, and I judge there must 
have been twenty who confessed Christ in different rooms. 
My reception among the students was most cordial and affec- 
tionate. I think the Lord has given me their hearts, and my 
first discouragement has been turned into great joy. I have 
addressed the theological students and have met many of 
them in private for prayer and conference. A good work 
has certainly begun. I shall stay to-day at least to see it 
furthered. It has been a peculiar and valuable experience. 

" Much love to you and to all. The Lord bless you. 
Pray, all of you, that I may not labor in vain or run in vain. 

" Yours affectionately, 

" Gordon." 

The effect which his personality and his earnest words had 
upon the students may be gathered from the following admi- 
rable notes written by one who was at the time in the senior 
class at Princeton and who took a deep interest in the whole 
movement : 

"In November, 1883, tne Interseminary Missionary 
Alliance met at Hartford. It was composed of delegates 
from theological institutions, but a large contingent from 
Princeton College went up and were permitted to enjoy the 
feast of good things, without participating in the discussions. 



15 2 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Dr. Gordon was one of the chief speakers, and gave at an 
evening session a powerful address on the enduement of the 
Holy Spirit for service. He held a consecration meeting 
at the close of the session at which nearly all the young 
men remained, even till nearly the midnight hour. It was a 
remarkably tender and spiritual service. He spoke very 
modestly and reverently of his own experience in receiving 
this enduement of the Spirit some years before. The Prince- 
ton students, like all the rest, were greatly drawn to Dr. Gor- 
don. When the ' Day of Prayer for Colleges ' drew near, the 
latter part of January, those of us who had heard him at 
Hartford were a unit in desiring him to preach on that day, 
and through our efforts he was invited and came. Recita- 
tions were suspended for the day, and the students were re- 
quired to attend service at eleven o'clock. The beautiful 
Marquand Chapel was filled with students, professors, people 
from the town, and students from the theological seminary. 
The sermon was excellent and made a fine impression, but the 
preacher was far from being himself. 

" I remember very distinctly, in talking with him several 
years later regarding that service, he said it was one of the 
most trying experiences of his life. Everything around him 
was new, and everybody was strange ; he was right in the 
heart of the conservatism of the great Presbyterian Church, 
and all about him were seated its ablest representatives. He 
was requested to remain over Sunday, which he did, and in 
the meantime conducted services as he had opportunity. But 
before he had concluded the meetings of Sunday he had re- 
covered himself and had won all hearts. In spite of the 
earnest request that he stay and continue the good work 
which had sprung up among the students during his brief 
visit, he felt obliged to return to his own charge. For the 
next week or two we carried on special religious services with 
some degree of success ; but finally it was decided that we 



AMONG STUDENTS 153 

must have Dr. Gordon return. At our earnest solicitation, 
indorsed by Dr. McCosh, he came back and was with us for 
perhaps ten days. He preached each evening in Murray 
Hall, and from nine till eleven o'clock went from dormitory 
to dormitory to conduct prayer and inquiry meetings. All 
the students that could be induced to attend were summoned 
from the section of the hall in which the meeting was held — 
a dozen, twenty, or more. A great many in those meetings 
made a profession of faith in Christ. They were gatherings 
never to be forgotten. One memorable feature was his teach- 
ing inquirers to pray. All bowed the head, and then Dr. 
Gordon would offer up a simple, earnest prayer of self-sur- 
render and consecration to God, followed, sentence by sen- 
tence, by a chorus of half a dozen voices. Many of the 
rougher fellows of the college were deeply moved in these 
meetings, to which they came when they would not attend a 
public meeting. 

" The students throughout the college were delighted with 
Dr. Gordon. Those who are familiar with such matters know 
how hard it is to suit an audience of undergraduates. I am 
sure there was less of criticism passed upon him than upon 
any other man who came before the students while I was in 
the institution. The professors as well as the students were 
pleased. Professor Raymond, of the chair of oratory, said 
the quality of Dr. Gordon's voice was unsurpassed; indeed, 
he had heard but one speaker who equaled him in this re- 
spect. He thought if his natural gift were cultivated, he 
would have marvelous power as a speaker. 

" Dr. McCosh was in most hearty sympathy with the work. 
He was present at very many of the public meetings, and always 
urged their importance upon the students. Those who ever met 
Dr. McCosh will readily understand that he had absolutely no 
gift as an evangelist. He was wholly lacking in that tact, 
grace, and delicacy which one must possess who would con- 



154 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

duct a successful inquiry meeting, among students especially. 
Frequently at the close of the meeting, as a matter of cour- 
tesy, the preacher would ask if the president had anything to 
say. He always had something to say by way of commenda- 
tion of the work and of him who conducted it. Indeed, he 
seemed unable to find words to express his appreciation of 
the preacher. With his broad Scotch accent, which was 
well-nigh unintelligible to those not familiar with his speech, 
he would invariably inform us that ' Dr. Gourdon is the loove- 
liest mon I iver had in me house. And if I iver h'ard the 
gospel preached in me life, it has been from the lips of Dr. 
Gourdon.' This sentiment was expressed with much feeling, 
evidently to the embarrassment of the preacher, and a good 
deal to the amusement of the students. 

11 It is doubtful if Dr. Gordon ever had a greater triumph, 
so to speak, than he had at Princeton. He showed himself 
to be by nature a prince among men, and by grace a man of 
God indeed. During that religious awakening, which con- 
tinued a number of weeks, we had the assistance of some of 
the most noted preachers we could command, such as Drs. 
John Hall and Charles Cuthbert Hall, of New York, Drs. 
Pierson and Mutchmore, of Philadelphia, besides Professors 
Hodge, Patton, and Paxton, of the seminary. But none of 
these, and not even Mr. Moody, who had been at the college 
some years before, was received as was our own great leader. 
It was remarked by those who had been connected with the 
college a long time that not within their recollection had any 
one met with Dr. Gordon's reception. This chapter in his 
life will always stand as a significant indication of his influence 
among men, and especially among young men in college, than 
whom a more critical class cannot be found. Most truthfully 
may it be said of Dr. Gordon, 'As a prince he had power 
with God and with men, and prevailed.' " 

During the daytime— which, as he said, " passes not a little 



AMONG STUDENTS 155 

slowly, as I can do nothing among the students until the 
evening, my work beginning at 7 p.m., and continuing until 
eleven" — he stayed at the Nassau House, "in order to give 
the students a better opportunity to come and see me, though 
I have two or three cordial invitations to professors' homes." 
After the evening services were over he went usually to Dr. 
McCosh's house and there spent the night. We get a glimpse 
of the delightful intercourse which he had in these late hours 
with the veteran president in certain charming reminiscences 
which he wrote out just after Dr. McCosh's death and within 
three months of his own departure. He says : 

" Some ten years ago, when invited by the students of 
Princeton to address them on the ' Day of Prayer for Col- 
leges,' the president wrote confirming the invitation, and add- 
ing, ' Of course you will live with me while in Princeton.' I 
cannot say that I was entirely at ease in his dignified presence 
the first hour after entering his house, or that he was entirely 
free in his confidence toward a stranger till he should know 
who and what manner of man he might be. But, being in- 
vited to remain over Sunday, and the ice having been broken 
in the evening of that day, so that more than a score of young 
men came forward as inquirers, the good man at once laid 
aside all reserve, and from that hour put his whole heart into 
the work, attending every public meeting, and urging on the 
students at every session of college prayers the importance of 
giving attention to their spiritual welfare. The services con- 
tinued for two weeks, very soon taking this turn in order to 
reach the students : preaching in the chapel at five daily, and 
then night meetings in the various halls, beginning at 9 p.m. 
and continuing till 12 p.m. It was in these gatherings that 
the personal work was done. 

" When I returned to the president's house at the close of 
these midnight meetings Dr. McCosh would invariably be 
found waiting, with a warm fire on the hearthstone and a 



156 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDOX 

table spread with refreshments, always eager to hear what new 
names had been added to the list of inquirers. There could 
hardly have been greater joy in heaven over repenting sinners 
than there was in his heart as the names were read to him 
from my note-book night after night ; and then he would talk 
them over and lift them up before the Lord, that he would by 
his Spirit make thorough work in their hearts and keep them 
from falling back. 

"And now, the day's work being over for president and 
preacher, the former was ready to talk, to tell you about the 
men and the experiences associated with his early life, to be 
drawn out on points of doctrine and controversy, to answer 
all the questions you might propound, no matter if you should 
continue till two or three in the morning. He would never 
g.'ve the slightest intimation that he desired to retire." 

The talk ran largely oil religious movements in Scotland. 
Many and interesting were the stories which were told of the 
heroic days of the Disruption. Irving, McCheyne, Chalmers, 
Duff, were all there in the dim twilight of the blazing fire's 
penumbra. They laughed heartily, too, over the mishaps 
which had befallen Matthew Arnold in his then recent visit to 
the college. For he had mailed his acceptance of an invita- 
tion to lecture there to Dr. Churchill, of Andover, sending in- 
stead a hearty expression of thanks for Dr. Churchill's hospi- 
tality to Dr. McCosh. And then, to cap all, he had missed 
the Princeton station and was obliged to walk eleven miles, 
coming finally into the little college town, spattered with 
mud, sitting on the high seat of a butcher-cart. 

At last, when the fire had burned to the last ash, the long 
night sessions would break up. 

" Thank God," says Gordon in closing his reminiscences, 
" for a great scholar who was able to yoke up the deepest 
philosophy with the simplest faith ; who, with all his learning, 
kept the heart of a child toward the Saviour. How much he 



AMONG STUDENTS 157 

owed for the purity of his faith and the simplicity of his piety 
and the stalwartness of his convictions to these friends of his 
early days whom he so loved and revered— Chalmers and 
McCheyne and the Bonars! Almost as remarkably as Dr. 
Wayland, in Brown, did President McCosh combine the in- 
tellectual and the evangelistic spirit. Pointing to a chair 
standing before the open fire in one of those midnight talks, 
he said, ' He came back some years after his graduation and 
knelt with me by that chair and confessed Christ. I believed 
he would do so, for I never forgot him nor ceased to pray for 
him after he left college.' He had been speaking of a very 
able but skeptical man with whom he had ' dealt much,' to use 
his own phrase, during his student days. Such college presi- 
dents are to be sought for and prayed for in these days. May 
God multiply their number." 

Gordon's work among college students did not end here. 
At the Northfield college conferences his influence upon 
young men was always marked. To mention one case only, 
Mr. Robert P. Wilder, the original and most prominent leader 
in the Student Volunteer Movement, since grown to such 
proportions, has declared in a recent letter that to A. J. Gor- 
don and to J. Hudson Taylor he owes more for the develop- 
ment of his spiritual life than to any others, living or dead. 
Others have made like statements. In later years, in addition 
to the addresses given at these college conferences, he spoke 
at various times at Yale, Amherst, Rutgers, Mount Holyoke, 
Williams, at Princeton again, and at Brown, always with 
great acceptance, and in several of the colleges named con- 
ducted series of religious meetings with the attendant personal 
w r ork described above. 



CHAPTER XIII 

MISSIONS OR MAMMON? 

The Congo Mission bequeathed to the A. B. M. U. — Dr. Gordon's fight 
against its abandonment — " The cooking-stove apostasy" — Address 
at Evangelical Alliance, " The Responsibility Growing out of our 
Perils and Opportunities " 

IN the fall of '84 the Livingstone Inland Mission, founded 
by Mr. and Mrs. Grattan Guinness of London, was 
handed over to the American Baptist Missionary Union. 
This mission was organized immediately after Stanley emerged 
from the gloom of interior Africa in '77. By this time its 
stations were planted all up and down the Lower Congo. 
Twenty-five men and women were in the field, acclimatized 
and instructed in the vernacular. Translations of a large part 
of the Scriptures had been made into many Congoese dialects. 
Schools were in running operation. A steamer for itinerating 
purposes plied from station to station. All the preliminary 
expenses, all the discouragements of frequent sicknesses and 
early deaths, which accompany missionary pioneering, had 
been borne by the founders. The mission with all its equip- 
ment was bequeathed without conditions to the American 
Baptists, who had been contemplating opening work in Africa, 
as to " those who believe in maintaining every word and 
ordinance of God." 

The gift was accepted at the Detroit meeting of the de- 
nomination in '84. A reaction of timid conservatism, how- 
ever, followed soon after. The value of the gift did not seem 

158 



MISSIONS OR MAMMON? 159 

to be fully appreciated. The difficulties ahead loomed large 
against the black sky of boundless African heathenism. A 
cry for " concentration of interests " went abroad, and pres- 
sure was brought to bear from many quarters looking to the 
return of the missionaries and the abandonment of the field. 

It was at this juncture that Dr. Gordon set himself to stem 
the tide. Earnestly did he appeal to his own church and to 
local conferences to resist the retrenchment. With his pen 
he addressed the denomination at large. A pointed tract, 
"The Ship Jesus," emphasizing the American debt to Africa, 
was written, and became widely influential. Finally he took 
the field with Dr. Sims, who had worked many years in this 
mission, and went from city to city over all the country east of 
the Mississippi, pleading for the evangelization of the Congo 
Valley. With statesman-like prevision he showed the stra- 
tegic opportunities of the mission. With burning words he de- 
nounced the proposed desertion of those who were holding 
the outposts. He aptly recalled the history of the great and 
flourishing Telugu Mission and the demands for its abandon- 
ment which had been made in its days of weakness. He 
denied the "lack of interest" which many were urging as a 
reason for withdrawal. "When the doctor would feel the 
pulse of a patient," said he, "he lays his finger on the wrist, 
where the walls of flesh are the thinnest. Who will say that 
we may not detect the missionary pulse and learn something 
of the moving of the Spirit by noting the expressions of 
Christ's poor saints who have sent up their little gifts— in 
some instances the widow's all — because the burden for Africa 
is on their hearts? I have rarely read anything more touch- 
ing than some letters of this sort which have been received ; 
and there have been hundreds of these small donations. 
How can the Union, having opened its treasury and invited 
contributions to the Congo Mission, and in response having 
received gifts from hundreds of donors, many of them, as I 



160 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

know, the fruit of the most conscientious self-sacrifice, fail 
now to fulfil the trust which the acceptance of such gifts in- 
volves? 

" No! let us, pastors and editors, laymen and workmen for 
Christ, shut our ears to this talk about ' giving up/ and raise 
the cry, ' Give.* Let us emphasize the cry by entering upon 
a course of self-denial which we have not known before, in 
economizing in our living and cutting off our luxuries, that 
we may have more to give. The American Baptists need 
the Congo almost as much as the Congo needs them. They 
need the tremendous appeal of its misery, its darkness, and its 
ruin to rouse them to their old-time heroism and self-denial. 
Ethiopia is at last stretching out her hands to God ; she is 
also stretching out her hands to us. How can we answer at 
the bar of God if, with all our yet unused resources, we turn 
away from the call, and withdraw our hands from Ethiopia? " 

The response to these appeals was such as to place the 
Congo Mission beyond even the suggestion of abandonment. 
Gordon was able to write from Asbury Park, where the ques- 
tion came up for final settlement at the annual meetings of 
the denomination, the following triumphant words : 

"Praise the Lord! The Congo Mission has gone up with 
a shout— gone up, that is to say, with the strong and unani- 
mous voice of all the people to possess the land. I wish you 
could have seen and heard the enthusiasm of the meeting 
yesterday. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof 
we are glad." 

" Dr. Gordon's best monument," wrote after his death one 
who knows more of this crisis than any other, " is the Congo 
Mission. He saved it!" 

The increasing tendency in Protestant churches to adopt 
unworthy methods for raising money, and the growth of 
church amusements and "vestry junketings" to the detriment 
of the spiritual life, was severely rebuked in an address which 



MISSIOXS O R MAMMON? iT)i 

Dr. Gordon delivered about this time. " Machinery," he said, 
"is taking the place of life in our churches. If money is 
needed for carrying on the Lord's work, the first resort is not 
to fasting and prayer, but to festivals and fairs. Now eating 
strawberries and cream in the interest of foreign missions 
stands in immeasurable contrast with foregoing butter and 
sugar, as the poor Salvationist does, in order to save thereby 
to help the gospel." He aptly characterized the series of 
noisome enterprises for filching dollars from unwilling pockets 
—the rainbow teas, the chocolate drills, the operettas, the 
bazaars, the clam-bakes, the minstrel shows, the broom drills, 
the kermesses, the oyster suppers, and so on to the end of the 
whole wretched category — as a new heresy, a heresy of con- 
duct, "the cooking-stove apostasy." The new methods of 
"compelling them to come in" were branded as a compulsion 
of the senses rather than of the heart. The extravagant bill- 
boards, advertising church services in the language of the 
opera-bouffe poster, he felt to be a dishonor and a reproach 
to the Lord Christ. Of the "entertainments" which they 
hawked, he said in his last message to the church : 

" Certain insects conceal their presence by assuming the 
color of the tree or leaf on which they prey. Church amuse- 
ments are simply parasites hiding under a religious exterior, 
while they eat out the life of Christianity." 

His opposition to these things dated back to the earliest 
years of his ministry. His own church, never much tainted 
with the canker, had silently and gradually, with the develop- 
ment of a new and higher religious consciousness, cast aside 
all such devices. 

This address awakened, together with a wide favorable re- 
sponse, much adverse criticism, as is always the case when 
extensive and popular abuses are attacked. In reply to these 
criticisms a counter-reply, printed in part below, was sent 
forth : 



1 62 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

" To invent a new phrase may give one renown, but it 
may be as perilous as to invent a new explosive unless one is 
prepared to be blown up by his own compound. They were 
thrown off in the heat of fervid utterance — this expression, 
* the cooking-stove apostasy,' and that other, ' the amusement 
heresy' — and now they are coming back without having 
cooled at all in the course of their travels. One suggests that 
the author must have relapsed into incorrigible Puritanism, 
and wonders if he has never heard of the love-feast of the 
early church, in which a simple meal was sanctified to the 
salutary use of Christians, and made a means of nourishing 
their social joys. To which we reply that we have so heard, 
and that we remember how quickly this feast degenerated, 
and brought in such abuses that it called out the stern rebuke 
of the apostle, ' What! have ye not houses to eat and to drink 
in? or despise ye the church of God? ' Thus it is that inno- 
cent things are so easily spoiled by our misuse unless we are 
very watchful. This is exactly our point. Another critic 
brings the accusation of pessimism. As though that were 
more dangerous than the shallow optimism which glides over 
the surfaces of things and complacently refuses to believe 
that ther^ may be perilous depths below! We desire to be 
neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but a truthist ; and such 
we humbly believe we are, in giving the note of warning 
suggested by these phrases. . . . 

"An excellent and sober Christian of fifty years' standing 
in one of our churches meets us and says, 'You are right, 
brother, in your note of warning. I am done w T ith church 
sociables. I have never objected to such gatherings accom- 
panied by a simple meal, nor do I now object. But when I 
found at the beginning of the year that our church had en- 
gaged a colored man to furnish the supper, and when I saw 
him there, with his white vest and white gloves and profes- 
sional cookery, I said, "No more of this."' By which he 



MISSIONS OR MAMMON? 163 

meant to say, we judge, that there may be danger of getting 
a ministry of three orders in our churches — pastor, deacons, 
and caterer, the last in white vestments manipulating the 
ritual of pies and cakes. And we think his alarm is well 
grounded. Usage sanctifies the most incredible innovations 
in the course of time. It is far easier to start a thing than to 
stop it, and we commend the wisdom of this man who stepped 
out when the caterer stepped in, saying, 'We have no such 
custom, neither the churches of God.' . . . 

" To denounce theater-going from that pulpit in which the 
theater has actually been set up is, we take it, a very ineffec- 
tive proceeding. There is no question in our mind as to 
which is the more objectionable for Christians, to go to the 
playhouse, or to bring the playhouse into the church. . . . 

"To one who asks why the work of Christian women in 
preparing delicacies to be sold at a church festival, or in mak- 
ing goods at a church fair, is not just as acceptable to the 
Lord as money, especially when they have not the latter to 
give, we reply, the work is acceptable ; but the principle of 
raising money in this way for the cause of Christ is what we 
object to. To get an equivalent in food or goods for the 
money put into the Lord's treasury robs the offering of its 
richest element — that of sacrifice. The very savor and 
sweetness of a gift in the sight of God are contained in this, 
as abundant Scriptures show. In God's reckoning the value 
of an offering depends as much on what it costs the giver as 
on what it nets the receiver. Therefore the treasury of the 
Lord is vastly more enriched by the widow's mite than by the 
widow's muffins. . . . 

' ' But what can poor churches in the country do, where 
money is scarce? ' asks another. Let them do a little in the 
right way, rather than much in the wrong way. ' For the 
honor of Christ I pray that the heathen may never learn how 
the American Christians raise money for missions,' writes a 



1 64 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

returned missionary in a recent article. And what advantage 
financially would it be for them to learn? The Bassein Baptist 
Christians out of their poverty give more per head for missions 
than the Baptist Christians of Massachusetts with all their 
wealth ; that is, they give more without these modern methods 
than we do with them. As for attracting people to the sanc- 
tuary, which is the principal aim of church suppers and enter- 
tainments, what is gained in that direction compared with the 
immense spiritual loss incurred? In a certain body of Chris- 
tians in New England one hundred and fifty-one churches re- 
port not a single accession by conversion during the last year. 
We know something of the ecclesiastical machinery by which 
these churches are carried on, and how almost universally the 
devices which we are considering enter into their established 
order. Is not the record sad enough, and does it not seem 
to call out the pathetic question of the Lord, ' Wherefore do 
ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor 
for that which satisfieth not? ' And by way of contrast, 
my poor brother, a pastor from Russia, is sitting by me while 
I write. He never heard of a church entertainment or church 
supper till he came to this country, and has not a single 
wheel of our church machinery in his system. Constantly 
persecuted, seven times imprisoned, once sent into exile, and 
with no place to gather his flock except his own private 
house, yet without any of our modern appliances, he has bap- 
tized in the region about his home four hundred converts dur- 
ing the last two years. Does not this suggest how much 
more the Lord can do without our modern improvements 
than with them? . . . 

" On the whole, it may be a question whether we have not 
laid undue stress of late on the mere question of drawing the 
masses. Christianity has repulsions as well as attractions, and 
these two are so perfectly adjusted as to hold off those who 
care only for the loaves and fishes, while drawing in such as 



MISSIONS OR MAMMON? 165 

are ordained to eternal life. The same voice which says, 
' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden,' also 
says, ' If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, 
and take up his cross, and follow me.' The operation of this 
twofold constraint of tenderness and severity is very strikingly 
told in two sentences from the Acts of the Apostles: 'And 
believers were the more added to the Lord ; ' ' And of the 
rest durst no man join himself to them.' To enervate our 
own spiritual life in our effort to draw the masses will be a 
very great price to pay for our success, if we gain it. Satan 
takes all ways to destroy the church. Heaven help us if, 
having resisted the encroachments of Arianism, we should 
now be seduced by this folly of vegetarianism. To deny the 
cross in our creed is a fearful thing ; to deny it in life may be 
even worse. ' For many walk, of whom I have told you often, 
and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of 
the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is 
their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, w r ho mind earthly 
things/ " 

In December, 1887, Dr. Gordon addressed the meeting of 
the Evangelical Alliance in Washington on "The Responsibility 
Growing out of our Perils and Opportunities." He spoke in 
part as follows : 

" We are accustomed to say that responsibility is measured 
by opportunity. That is certainly one of its measures. But 
there are two factors necessary to constitute an opportunity — 
the ability and the occasion. There may be the ability with- 
out the occasion, or there may be the occasion without the 
ability. In either case we have but half an opportunity, and 
this cannot evoke any very great responsibility. But where 
both are present in large degree — ability and occasion — the 
upper and nether millstones of accountability have come to- 
gether, and woe be to the Christian who gets between them. 
For if new corn is not ground into bread for a suffering world, 



1 66 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

the owner of the corn will be ground. If he does not give 
his substance he will be in danger of losing his soul. It is 
estimated that eight billions of dollars are to-day treasured 
up in the hands of Protestant Christians in the United States 
— a sum so great that it staggers our arithmetic to compute 
it. That is one element of our ability. Into our doors the 
untaught and unregenerate populations of the Old World are 
pouring by the hundreds of thousands every year, while 
through our doors we can look out upon every nation of the 
globe as a field ripe for missionary harvest. Here is our oc- 
casion. It is enough to startle one into alarm to think of the 
stupendous obligation created by the conjunction of these 
two elements. . . . 

" If we look at the great laboring-class we hear from 
some of its representatives the impatient murmurings of com- 
munism. I know of no answer to such at once so subduing 
and so potent as the divine communism which is presented in 
the New Testament. I open the first chapter of the church's 
history and read this remarkable statement concerning the 
primitive Christians : ' And all that believed were together, 
and had all things common ; and sold their possessions and 
goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. . . . 
Neither said any of them that aught of the things which he 
possessed was his own.' At once I hear the current com- 
ment on this text that it represents only a provisional and 
temporary condition of things, and was not intended for a 
permanent model. Yes, that is the way w r e are apt to look 
upon ideals which are too high for our faith or too hard for 
our selfishness. It is the exegesis of covetousness and self- 
interest that has largely fixed this interpretation upon the text. 
As a matter of fact there is not the slightest intimation any- 
where that this feature of the primitive church was intended 
to be transitory. I for one arn profoundly grateful for this 
lofty and divinely appointed example of Christian commu- 



MISSIONS OR MAMMON? 167 

nism. Of course in translating this example into practical ex- 
perience we must take into account all the modifying texts: 
' If any will not work, neither shall he eat/ which excommu- 
nicates from our community all the shiftless and idle ; and ' If 
any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his 
own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an 
infidel,' which enjoins upon us the duty of making decent 
provision for the family. What we find as a resultant is 
this : that the church, according to its primitive ideal, is the 
one institution in which every man's wealth is under mortgage 
to every man's want, every man's success to every man's ser- 
vice. No laborer in any part of the field should lack the 
means for prosecuting his work so long as any fellow-disciple 
elsewhere has ability to supply his lack. This, I believe, was 
the divine communism on which the church was founded, and 
by which it was intended to be perpetuated. And if we could 
present to the discontented working-classes to-day this fresh, 
unsullied ideal in active operation it would be the most power- 
ful answer possible to their bitter complaint of the selfishness 
and unsympathy of men. . . . 

" Two centuries ago quaint Thomas Fuller said, ' If any 
suppose that society can be peaceful while one half is pros- 
pered and the other half pinched, let him try whether he can 
laugh with one side of his face while he weeps with the 
other.' We are not concerned, however, with those outside 
the church, but those within. As surely as darkness follows 
sunset will the alienation of the masses follow sanctimonious 
selfishness in the church. . . . The church millionaire stands 
at exact antipodes to the church millennial, and in proportion 
as the former flourishes the latter will be hopelessly deferred. 
It is not an orthodox creed that repels the masses, but an 
orthodox greed. Let a Christian in any community stand 
forth conspicuously as honest as the law of Moses, yet build- 
ing up an immense fortune by grinding the faces of the poor, 



1 68 ADOiXIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

compelling them all the while to turn the grindstone, and 
he will wean a whole generation from the gospel. . . . We 
have no power to prevent men of the world from heaping up 
colossal fortunes. But our gospel plainly forbids Christians 
to do it. ' Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth/ 
said Jesus to his disciples for all time. It requires no very 
skilful exegesis to explain the text ; but it would require a very 
ingenious exegesis to explain it away. 

11 Dr. Mc Glynn told the exact truth when he recently declared 
the corruption of the church traceable to two things— Roman 
gold and Roman purple. As fast as the church became a 
coffer for hoarding coveted wealth she became a coffin for 
enshrining a dead Christianity. And to-day the scandal of 
Christendom is exhibited to our gaze in a pope claiming to be 
the true and only Vicar of Christ, living in a palace with six 
hundred attendants, and enjoying a personal income of a 
million and a half dollars annually. Oh, if, according to the 
dream of devout Catholics of the middle ages, some papa 
angelicus were to arise, an angel-pope who would fling out 
this vast and prodigal church wealth among his penniless sub- 
jects, while he himself once more took up the primitive com- 
mission and went forth without purse or scrip, what an ' anti- 
poverty ' argument would that be for men and angels to wit- 
ness! I say all this not to cast gratuitous contempt on 
Rome, but to bring a solemn warning to America. That 
eight billions of hoarded money constitutes a tremendous 
danger. I cannot see how the church can keep hold of it 
and be able at the same time to take hold of the million 
hands of poverty and illiteracy and spiritual destitution which 
are stretched out for help. . . . 

" In this world, as well as in the world to come, there is an 
impassable gulf between Dives and Lazarus. If the church 
deliberately chooses the company of Dives, putting on purple 
and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day, she cannot 



MISSIONS OR MA AIM ON? 169 

keep with Lazarus. The attempt may be made to effect 
conciliation by tossing biscuits across the gulf. But this will 
not do. It is not money that is wanted, to bring the dis- 
affected masses into sympathy with the church, so much as 
fellowship. The word koinonia, 'community,' or 'having in 
common/ is a great characteristic word of the New Testament. 
The church is a heavenly commonwealth, in which there is a 
community of life with the Head and a community of goods 
with the members and a community of sympathy with the 
world. If only the church could once more stand forth trans- 
figured in its primitive ideal, it would be certain to repeat its 
primitive conquests. Let the ministers of our great metropol- 
itan churches who enjoy munificent salaries begin the reform 
by becoming like the chief apostle — poor, that they may make 
many rich ; and let the millionaire pewholders follow their 
lead by parting their goods to such as have need. Then see 
if the growing spirit of communism will not be speedily 
arrested, not by the counter-irritant of ridicule, but by the 
emollient of Christ-like example. . . . 

" If we look to the upper and best-educated classes of 
society we are confronted with a wide-spread and growing 
agnosticism. And what is agnosticism? It is culture ending 
in ignorance, as the highest mountain-peaks are lost in clouds. 
I would not deride or pour contempt on this tendency lest I 
be guilty of what an old writer has called 'beating a cripple 
over the head with his own crutches/ A loud-mouthed and 
boastful infidelity may awaken our contempt, but a lame 
faith, stretching out its hands toward the great mysteries of 
life and eternity, deserves to be pitied rather than pelted. 
And so I have delighted to quote to men of this school the 
words of Scripture concerning our great High Priest, 'who 
can have compassion on the ignorant [the agnoousi?i i the 
agnostics], and on them that are out of the way. 1 

" But how shall the church meet this growing sentiment 



170 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

outside the church? I may surprise you when I answer, 
With a humble Christian agnosticism. 

" Christianity is not a system of philosophy, but a revelation 
to faith. The attempt to survey and map out its doctrines 
according to our logic charts has always proved injurious. 
If theologians insist upon being wise above what is written, 
neologians, by a natural reaction, will be ignorant below 
what is written. I am a most decided believer in a positive 
gospel, and concerning everything that has been revealed I 
think we may be just as sure as concerning the conclusions of 
mathematics. But not everything which we desire to know 
has been revealed. The gospel exhibits a divine reserve as 
well as a divine revelation, and the same voice of the great 
Teacher which declares concerning one realm of truth, ' To 
you it is given to know/ declares concerning another realm, 
' It is not for you to know.' 

" Now while upon such questions as, for example, the resur- 
rection of the body at Christ's second coming there is a flood 
of light from Scripture, upon the state and employments of 
the soul between death and resurrection hardly a ray of light 
has been thrown. And while the most positive information 
has been vouchsafed as to what God will do for the heathen 
who hear and believe the gospel, he has nowhere informed 
us exactly what will be the ground and method of his dealings 
with those heathen who have never heard it. Yet such 
minute surveys of the terra i?icognita of the intermediate state 
have been attempted, and such learned conclusions concern- 
ing this mystery of the heathen's accountability have been put 
forth, that great religious bodies have been set in battle array, 
and vast missionary interests have been imperiled. If the 
most learned man in the whole fraternity of theologians had 
long ago faced these questions with a positive and dogmatic 
' I don't know/ he would have been worthy to be counted ' a 
prophet, and more than a prophet.' 



MISSIONS OR MAMMON? 171 

11 It has been the misfortune of Christian philosophers from 
the beginning that they have made theology ' dark with ex- 
cess of light.' The heresies which have afflicted the church 
have, almost without exception, been invented by learned 
scholars; and the speculations which have blighted the faith 
of believers have generally been hatched and brooded in the 
theological schools. The great mass of plain and practical 
Christians have, as a rule, kept the faith in its purity ; for 
they have been content to believe more than they know, and 
to accept more than they can understand. Reason and faith 
are like the two compartments of an hour-glass : when one is 
full the other is empty. Those who have determined to know 
all things, revealed and unrevealed, have often thereby re- 
duced their faith to the minimum, and in so doing have con- 
tracted the very faculty by which we are to apprehend God. 

" Now what I am urging is this, that as sumptuous wealth 
in the hands of the church has always proved a curse, so a 
sumptuous learning in the schools of theology has proved too 
frequently a blight upon the faith and piety of Christians. 
Agnosticism is the spiritual pauperism which stands over 
against the theological and philosophical wealth with which 
men attempt to endow the gospel. Paul declares that in giv- 
ing the gospel God 'destroyed the wisdom of the wise.' If 
this wisdom of the wise gets installed in our theological chairs 
and presides there, it will in turn destroy the gospel. It is 
written that ' when the world by wisdom knew not God, it 
pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them 
that believe.' If the wisdom of this world attempts to reverse 
this order, and to please men by the learnedness of preaching, 
it will darken and bewilder those that would believe. 

" Here, I solemnly conceive, is one of the most serious 
perils to which our Protestant ministry is exposed to-day, viz., 
that it shall be impoverished by excess of learning, that it 
shall attach the first importance to German learning and to 



172 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Greek philosophy, instead of going forth with the humble 
equipment of the Word of God. I am perpetually chagrined 
to see how much better many of the unschooled lay preachers 
of our time can handle the Scriptures than many clergymen 
who have passed through the theological curriculum. I do 
not undervalue the seminary in saying this, but beg that we 
should consider the point at which it is most conspicuously 
failing. I wish, for one, that no more chairs might be en- 
dowed in our theological institutions for teaching the relations 
of Christianity to science ; that those courses in polemics, 
which stuff men's heads full of the history of all the heresies 
which have afflicted the church from the beginning, might be 
shortened more and more, and that the time thus saved might 
be given to studying the Bible and practising with the 'sword 
of the Spirit.' 

" Magnificent and far surpassing all that has gone before 
is the electr'c light ; but the shadow which it casts is the dark- 
est and den est that ever yet fell upon earth. And I believe 
that in New England, where the light of philosophic Chris- 
tianity has been the most brilliant and the intellectual lenses 
and reflectors for its diffusion the most clear and polished, 
the shadows of agnosticism and atheism fall most darkly. 

" Would that our teachers of theology were content to know 
less that they might know more, that they were less endued 
with the spirit of modern thought and more deeply baptized 
by that Spirit that has been sent to us ' that we might know 
the things that are freely given to us of God.' " 



CHAPTER XIV 



SEASONABLY OUT OF SEASON 



Northfield and its conferences — Dr. Gordon's spiritual experiences — 
Work at Seabright — Summer ministries in New Hampshire and on 
the Atlantic 

THERE are few lovelier spots than Northfield. The 
broad Connecticut flowing with many a sweeping bend 
between green hills and rich intervales, the " sweet aisles of 
the wilderness" stretching beyond the town, and the long 
street lined with elms, which, like the clustered pillars of a 
church, meet overhead in green vaulting with a fan-tracery of 
foliage, unite to give to it a peculiar attractiveness. The con- 
ferences here, which have come to fill so important a place in 
the current life of American Christianity, were first organized 
by Mr. Moody in 1882. The old camp-meeting of the stormy 
and emotional type was a thing of the past ; the system of 
summer schools, so widely developed nowadays, was as yet 
in its infancy. Into the Northfield plan both ideas enter. 
The demonstrative zeal of the earlier institution is tempered 
and corrected by sober Scripture study, while to the quiet, 
meditative, scholastic tone of a summer school of theology an 
element of enthusiasm and of practicality is added by the 
presence of evangelists, missionaries, and working pastors. 
Here gather summer after summer the evangelists Whittle, 
Needham, Munhall, Mills, Chapman, and the rest who go 
from town to town and from city to city, preaching, as 
did the Franciscans of old, to men of all sorts and condi- 

i73 



174 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

tions. Able, faithful, self-denying workers in city slums are 
here too, and of those from heathen fields not a few : Hud- 
son Taylor, the organizer and forger of that great instrument 
for the evangelization of China, the Inland Mission ; Bishop 
Thoburn, the statesman missionary, who has wrought in India 
a work second only to that of Duff and of Martyn ; Ashmore, 
with his unshaken faith in China as a great figure in the en- 
larged Christendom to be ; Chamberlain of the Arcot Mission, 
Post of Syria, and scores of others. For speakers and teach- 
ers the great globe itself is ransacked, the best men in the 
world-church being brought into service. Hither have come 
the courtly, piquant Drummond from Edinburgh, Pierson, 
mighty in the Scriptures, Andrew Murray, the saintly mystic 
of South Africa, Andrew Bonar, John McNeill, F. B. Meyer, 
Webb-Peploe, and more of equal note. Their message is 
intensified and multiplied in that they preach to the preachers 
and lead the leaders of the people. Yet hundreds of laymen 
as well gather about them, the most devout and earnest in the 
churches. These are brought into relation with missionaries 
and Christian workers. A medium of contact is thus estab- 
lished fruitful in its influence. Finally, the wholesome inter- 
denominationalism of the place establishes the best bonds of 
Christian unity. 

Dr. Gordon's connection with these conferences runs back 
almost to the beginning. Summer after summer he resigned 
his much-needed rest that he might give to eager hearers his 
view of the truth. To Mr. Moody he was as a right hand. 
Often did the great evangelist dwell upon his readiness to do 
any service, to take any place, to stand in any gap. " I can- 
not thank you enough," he wrote one summer, when his ab- 
sence had thrown the whole charge of the conference upon 
Dr. Gordon, "for your great help at Northfield. All the 
letters I have got from there speak in the highest terms of 
your generalship. I know of no one who could have taken 



"SEASONABLY OUT OF SEASON'' 175 

your place. It will now answer the question what is going to 
become of the work when I am gone. May the Lord reward 
you a thousandfold." 

Of the addresses which he delivered here one writes : # 
" His preaching was as far as possible from any mere 
oratorical performance. He had the graces of the finished 
speaker, but they were all invested with the higher grace of 
God's ambassador. He taught with authority, but it was 
with a derived and deputed authority. Among all the re- 
nowned speakers at the Northfield Conference, he was facile 
princepsj and the address he gave there last summer on the 
Holy Spirit has been pronounced by competent judges the 
most complete ever given, even from that platform of great 
teachers. There was this supreme charm in his utterances, 
that, while those who are less taught of the Spirit seek to de- 
fend the inspiration and inerrancy of the Word of God, he so 
exhibited its wonders, so led the way into its mysteries, so un- 
folded its hidden riches, and showed such articulated and 
organic unity in all its parts and members, that doubt was dis- 
armed, and scholarly ' criticism ' hesitated to use the scientific 
scalpel upon a body of truth instinct with the living Spirit of 
God!" 

The Student Volunteer Movement, which, w r onderful as it 
is, bids fair to be but the spray of the incoming tide of mis- 
sionary activity, dates back to the conference of '86. The 
gathering of representatives from the colleges of the nation — 
a constituency of more than two hundred and fifty thousand 
young men and women — is an important feature of North- 
field summers. The healthy, sunbrowned, muscular Chris- 
tianity of the afternoon athletic fields, and the missionary 
enthusiasm of the conference hours, delighted Dr. Gordon's 
heart. For the amusing competition in national bombast 
'twixt English and American at the Fourth of July fete, with 
* Dr. Arthur T. Pierson. 



176 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

all the contending and ridiculous claims to national prece- 
dence, he had a keen relish. But his chief gratification, of 
couise, was that of the teacher with apt and willing pupils. 
Upon these perfervid and eager hearts his influence was great 
and beneficent. 

" I was announced this afternoon," he writes, " with quite 
a flourish of trumpets, but fear, from my excessive weariness, 
that I responded but with a jews'-harp. ... I would not 
have missed the summer school. It is an event great in re- 
sults. The missionary enthusiasm has been a feature which 
has astonished us all. It came to be the ruling idea when I 
left, and over sixty names were down as pledged to that work. 
Almost the entire delegation from Princeton was included. I 
could but rejoice at the demonstration given that the children 
of godly and self-denying parents do follow in the way of the 
fathers and mothers ; for there were nearly ten missionary 
sons there, all of them on fire with missionary zeal; and all 
but one, who is a confirmed invalid, are bent on returning to 
the foreign field. Indeed, this one says that it is his greatest 
regret that he is deprived of this privilege. And so I have 
given him a long talk to-day on divine healing. I hope he 
may yet lay hold of this." 

And at another time he writes to his wife : 

" It is really so that a great opportunity has been open be- 
fore me. Doctrines which are so obvious and plain to me 
seem so strange to many to whom I minister. I think we 
planted seeds on Mount Hermon which, by the grace of God, 
will yield a good harvest. The day I came away they were 
to have a consecration meeting. Mr. Moody said, ' All who 
want such a meeting, and are ready to yield themselves 
wholly to God, come.' I expected a remarkable time. The 
questions which they asked about the work of the Holy Spirit 
are the hardest I have to answer. Questions of experience 
are so much more difficult than questions of doctrine. For 



"SEASONABLY OUT OF SEASON" 177 

while '■ the testimony of the Lord is sure," the testimony of 
consciousness is very variable, like the impression on the sea 
beach, which the next wave may change. So after Mr. 
Moody had given his experience of the baptism of the Spirit 
because the students called for it, I confessed to much shrink- 
ing and reluctance when they made the same demand of me. 
The boys would have all that could be known both of doctrine 
and experience. A hungrier crowd one rarely finds ; may the 
Lord give us more and more to tell. . . . Mr. Moody in- 
quired tenderly for you. He seems set on seeing you at 
Northfield this year. So have the axles of baby's chariot 
greased, and have the canopy swung for the journey. That 
princely carriage, with its sweet-faced occupant, often comes 
before me in my waking visions, and or ever I am aware my 
soul makes me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib, and I am 
impatient to go near and join myself to that chariot. Love 
to all, and blessings on the little one especially. " 

And again, after describing the Northfield convocation of 
'85 as a great meeting of men of many tongues and of diverse 
denominational connections, he says, " Notwithstanding this 
variety of denominational standing, there was absolute har- 
mony in doctrinal deliverances. We doubt if a convention 
made up of any one of the above-named bodies could be held 
fourteen days and preserve such entire unanimity of senti- 
ment. Indeed, we are persuaded that those who have mastered 
and who correctly maintain the three A's of Christianity — the 
Atonement, the Advocacy, and the Advent— will find them- 
selves in close accord on all other points. One entire day was 
given to the doctrine of the Lord's second coming. All the 
speakers held strongly to the premillennial advent, and found in 
it the key-note which brought their whole system into accord." 

One of the interesting features of Gordon's later ministry 
at Northfield was the evening baptism in the lake which has, 
since his death, been called after his name. These services 



1 7$ ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

were of great solemnity. The assembled people, the soft 
singing in the eventide air, the majestic baptismal formula, 
" Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus 
Christ were baptized into his death? " the face as it had been 
the face of an angel, the broken waters, and the resurrection 
chant at the end — these things can never be forgotten by 
those who stood by the water's edge. 

The letters which follow touch closely upon Northfield, and 
illustrate from Dr. Gordon's personal experience the doctrine 
of " enduement for service," which he preached with so much 
power at the conferences. 

"Dr. Gordon," writes Mr. George C. Needham, " unlike 
some Christians, believed there was something always beyond. 
This he ever sought to attain. Fifteen years ago, during the 
first Northfield convention, he was desirous to secure what he 
yet needed as a saint and servant of Christ. Toward the 
close of those memorable ten days, spent more in prayer than 
in preaching, my beloved friend joined me in a midnight hour 
of great heart-searching and infilling of the Spirit. He read 
with peculiar tenderness our Lord's intercessory prayer of 
John xvii. The union of the believer with Christ and the 
Father, as taught by our Lord in that chapter, called out fer- 
vent exclamations, while with deep pathos he continued read- 
ing. During united prayer which followed the holy man 
poured out his soul with a freedom and unction indescribable. 
I never heard him boast of any spiritual attainment reached 
during that midnight hour. Soul experiences were to him 
very sacred, and not to be rehearsed on every ordinary oc- 
casion. But I have no doubt that he received then a divine 
touch which further ennobled his personal life and made his 
ministry of ever-increasing spirituality and of ever-w T idening 
breadth of sympathy." 

The work at Northfield finished, he had hurried down to 
the New Jersey coast to preach on Sunday at Seabright. 



"SEASONABLY OUT OF SEASON" 179 

"It's a great way," he writes, "people have of coming to 
the beach, living in wooden cottages of three or four little 
rooms— the sand knee-deep, no cooling shade, but 'sacred 
high, eternal noon,' and the glare of the sun intensifying the 
noonday. Moody cannot endure the sea-shore. His green 
fields and ever-shadowing hills and deep-rolling Connecticut 
are his paradise. So my native hills and quiet shades at New 
Hampton are to me. I long to be back thereto. . . . Mrs. 
A has instituted beach meetings for the fishermen and sea- 
side rabble, and not only they came out yesterday, but a great 
company of the gay and fashionable. It was a fine sight, 
but not an easy service to manage, since the breakers are very 
noisy, and the sound of many waters is a very unequal rival 
when brought into competition with my voice. However, I 
think I made them hear. May the Lord bless the Word." 

Of the humble, self-denying work of the afternoon previous 
—a ministry which we believe should be connected with the 
midnight hour at Northfield — he does not speak. It came 
out after his death in the following note : 

" I want to add my name to the long list of those to whom 
dear Dr. Gordon brought almost the greatest spiritual blessing 
that I ever had. No one knew how much he was to me ; he 
never knew. At Seabright, years ago, he kindly, and without 
our having any especial claim upon him, came to us to preach 
in the chapel and the little reading-room where the fishermen 
met. Many a time have I seen him on his knees beside those 
common, rough men, praying and leading them into the king- 
dom of God. I remember how new to me his way was of 
leading sinners to Christ. I learned a little about it from 
him. I remember his once coming from Northfield after the 
August conference. He seemed filled with the Spirit; he 
could not talk commonplaces. He said he had had a great 
blessing. He went to his room, and came out shortly after 
and said he was going down to the fisher village, and asked 



180 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

the way. He did not come back until we were at dinner— 
that hot afternoon. He had visited the beer and liquor saloons 
and prayed with the men there, and had been among the 
shanties. I know more than one family saved that day. His 
dear kind sympathy and instruction and his family prayers — 
oh, how much they were in our home! His book, ' The Two- 
fold Life/ is one of the few religious books I keep on my 
table and near my heart. He gave it me on my birthday 
some years ago. Whenever he came to New York he made 
us a real pastoral visit." 

His ministry in his native town was continuous through all 
the summers of his life. As regularly as the day of rest settled 
down on the quiet hills, could he be seen, with Bible under 
his arm, walking the long, maple-shaded village street to the 
little white meeting-house with its importunately resonant bell. 
In later years it was his special joy to preach in the afternoons 
also, in a church building dismantled and long disused. Sit- 
uated near the line of an adjacent township, the " Dana Meet- 
ing-house " was central to several communities, and on oc- 
casion could draw on a widely scattered constituency of back 
farms as well. On many occasions Dr. Gordon held here 
all-day services, preaching twice or thrice, and conducting in- 
quiry meetings. What a delight these informal gatherings 
were to him! How he would revel in illustration drawn 
from the every-day life of the farm! The oxen bearing the 
yoke, the sheep straying on the mountain-side, the seed thrown 
into the fresh furrow — how admirably were the parables of 
the gospels translated into the homely correspondences of New 
England country life! His great gifts of illustration and of 
story-telling were used with charming appositeness and sim- 
plicity. And very eagerly did the matter-of-fact people drink 
in these practical and pictorial expositions of the words of 
Christ. We shall never forget those still August afternoons, 
the long grass waving lazily in the occasional breezes, the 





The Dana Meeting-House. 



"SEASONABLY OUT OF SEASON 11 181 

woolly masses of clouds heaped on the steel-blue sky-fields, 
the motley teams tied to the dilapidated fences and to the low 
branches of trees, and that mellifluous voice sending its full 
diapason out of the open windows and doors. Inside, the 
people sat in old-fashioned box pews, facing in all directions, 
and in the high pulpit— so high that his head could not have 
been much more than two feet from the ceiling— stood the 
preacher. On the shelf -like desk lay the familiar worn Greek 
Testament, open to some chapter in Colossians or Luke which 
was to serve as the subject-matter of the discourse. Scripture 
was compared with Scripture, words were traced from gospel 
to epistle, and from epistle back to prophecy, and then placed 
in such collocation as to bring out in full force the profound 
verities. How our hearts burned within us as we sat in those 
quaint boxes and listened anew to the recital of the blessed 
truths and hopes! Here were no metaphysics to confound 
and weary untaught souls, no prideful rhetoric, no worldly 
display of learning, but rather " simple Christ to simple men " 
—just such homely teaching as Latimer employed in the 
villages of sixteenth-century England, and as Whitefield used 
hard by the coal-pits of Lancashire. 

Nor was the summer work in New Hampshire confined to 
his own town. He was for some years a sort of bishop— 
without the lawn and title of ecclesiasticism— to the dismantled 
churches of the abandoned farms. What more characteristic 
of the real, the primitive bishop than this work of strengthen- 
ing and stablishing the perishing churches of a half-deserted 
country? How characteristic, too, of Gordon's humility of 
spirit! Why should he, with his great, prosperous city church, 
care to trouble himself with these poor, decadent, cross-roads 
meeting-houses, with their bare handful of unspiritual, unlet- 
tered folk! Surely no man needed more the " total rest" of 
his few weeks. To none would the summer days have passed 
more delightfully with the last volume of history or of current 



1 82 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

theological discussion ; but his meat and drink was to do the 
will of Him that sent him. His labor and his recreation, his 
toilsome life and his brief vacations, had but one aim and in- 
terest. The extension of God's kingdom in New Hampshire 
was to him as important as its advancement in the crowded 
cities of India and China, or along the watercourses of cen- 
tral Africa. And so "out of season" he preached and 
worked, as well as in those months which are assigned for the 
formal duties of the pulpit. 

The extent of this rural work is surprising when we recall 
it in detail. He bore many little constituencies on his heart 
and mind. Now he would arrange for furnishing this country 
church with hymn-books, now for the systematic visitation of 
some neglected region, now for the supply of some unoccupied 
pulpit by the students of his training-school. Several years 
since he aided in the reorganization of a church in the little 
town of Salisbury, Webster's birthplace, and had the great joy 
of placing over it one of the stanch "redeemed men" of 
Clarendon Street— one who had been saved from the horrible 
pit and the miry clay of drunkenness. The summer before 
his death he went up to Jefferson, in the far north of the State, 
after a laborious week's convention in Maine, and with the 
usual ten days of Northfield before him. The church there, 
after having been closed many years, had been resuscitated 
by the labor of one of his students — a woman. At her earnest 
solicitation, foregoing his own wish to join his family, and at 
the expense of all the vexations which insufficient and un- 
timely railroad connections imply, he spent a Sunday there, 
preaching, baptizing, administering the communion, and ex- 
horting the infant church to unity, godliness, and patient 
labor. 

It was his often expressed belief that "the deadness and 
dearth everywhere here " could be arrested only by the preach- 
ing of common men who knew the Scriptures and eschewed 



"SEASONABLY OUT OF SEASON" 183 

philosophizing. He longed for a renaissance of the class of 
" farmer preachers " with which his boyhood had been familiar.. 
" Three of the four churches which stood in the town where I 
am staying this summer," he once said in a NortMeld address, 
" were manned by farmers. When higher education came 
they felt themselves crowded out, and the class is lost to us. 
I believe in the farmer preachers. They knew the Bible 
from cover to cover. I wish we had that class in the country 
to-day to preach to the people, and I hope God will send 
down a vision of his Spirit that will inspire these men to go 
forward and preach just as they used to. When the fashion 
came on of being educated, they made the mistake of trying 
to appear as the educated, and began to read their sermons. 
With these men we could renew the religious life of New 
England." 

Nor was this summer ministry suspended even in mid-ocean. 
In crossing the Atlantic, Gordon invariably sought out the un- 
privileged and taught them. He describes in a letter written in 
'88 the meetings which he held one Sunday in the crowded, 
fetid steerage of a Cunarder : 

" Sunday afternoon we got permission to hold service 
among the steerage passengers. They were of all nationalities 
and all creeds, and were not ready at once to gather for a 
religious and Protestant service. So I went down into the 
hold, and preached to the men and women in their bunks, or 
as they sat lounging and smoking on the floor. Though dis- 
inclined at first to hear, they soon became attentive, and lis- 
tened with deep interest as I preached to them of the Good 
Shepherd going after the lost sheep. Meanwhile Mrs. Gordon 
had started singing on the deck among the same class, and, 
with the help of a few Christian friends, had held their atten- 
tion till I came up and preached to them also. This service 
was quietly listened to, though with some interruptions. When 
I announced to the people that 'there is none other name under 



184 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved,' a 
Catholic Irishman, with just enough of his national beverage 
aboard to make him mellow and religious, stepped out and 
crossed himself very devoutly, exclaiming, * That's so, your 
riverance! Jesus Christ is the Saviour, and St. Peter is head 
of the church— St. Peter whom he commanded to walk on 
the water. Think of that, my friends '—pointing out over the 
waves— 'think of St. Peter walking on the sea.' And so he 
went on in a very noisy but friendly way to vindicate the 
primacy of St. Peter, the head of the apostolate, till the crowd 
insisted that he be quiet that the preacher might finish his 
sermon. Then I proceeded, urging the people that they were 
sinners in need of pardon, till a socialist, sitting on the bulk- 
head with his pipe in his mouth, cried out, ' Preach to Jay 
Gould. He is the sinner that needs praying for.' And so he 
gave us something of a talk on the tyranny of capital and the 
oppression of labor. Thus we closed, but not without finding 
warm-hearted Christians, Swede and Scotch especially, and a 
Welsh Methodist, who led the singing and became thereafter 
my faithful helper and co-laborer among his shipmates. A 
good opportunity is afforded on shipboard for giving the 
gospel if we are mindful of the Lord's words, 'As ye go, 
preach.' This public introduction has given us some oppor- 
tunities for personal talks on board, which we trust may not 
be without fruit." 



CHAPTER XV 



A CHARACTER SKETCH 



Personal appearance — Traits and characteristics — Work among poor — 

Home life 

WHAT we are about to say of Dr. Gordon's personal 
character may seem to those unacquainted with him 
suggestive of that method of chronicling men's lives which 
consists in suppressing or ignoring faults and in unduly mag- 
nifying virtues ; but to those who ever shared his companion- 
ship it will seem an inadequate estimate of a personality super- 
lative in its sweetness and saintliness. We cannot desist from 
applying to him what he once wrote of John Woolman, to 
whose " Journal " he so frequently acknowledged his indebted- 
ness: 

"We dare not indorse the verdict of one who has called 
him 'the man who, in all the centuries since the advent of 
Christ, lived nearest to the divine pattern.' It is impossible 
to give such solitary preeminence to any disciple of Christ. 
We have called him, above all whom we have known, a dis- 
ciple of the Holy Ghost and the most worthy exemplar of 
'the love of the Spirit.'" Qualities which we look upon in 
ourselves as attainments we think of here as natural and in- 
evitable traits of one who wore so manifestly the white rose 
of a pure life. 

In personal appearance he was of massive form and well 
proportioned. His hair had turned early from chestnut to 
silver. He seemed never to have had any long period of 
middle life. The transition from spring to fall, from youth- 

185 



1 86 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

fulness to the grayness and gravity of age, was direct. In 
meditation his face appeared to some a little severe ; in relax- 
ation none could be more gracious and genial. In his last 
years the light of heaven played about his features. This 
radiancy, which was but the symbol of the life within, was 
startling at times. On one occasion an Irish servant-girl 
opened the door for him at a house where he was calling, 
and on announcing him said that she had forgotten his name, 
but that he certainly had the face of an angel. This strange 
spiritual light was neither the silver shimmer of the hair 
nor the deep benignity of the far-shining pupil, nor the calm 
of the features. It seemed to be all these suffused with some- 
thing else too subtle for description, something ethereal, rare, 
beatific. 

In his daily walk he was beyond criticism. " He and his 
sermons are one," they were wont to say of John Tauler. It 
could be repeated here. " If Dr. Gordon should sin," said a 
Boston minister, " I should lose my faith in God." What 
others commit of the Scriptures to memory he committed to 
practice. " We now know what ' the life hid with Christ ' is," 
said his people of him. " It has been visibly exemplified 
before us." 

Neither could sins of omission be well charged upon one 
whose whole life was spent in a round of ceaseless and self- 
denying effort for others. " The man whose hands are full," 
he would say, " is generally found to be the one most efficient 
in the service of Christ. The strings of the viol must be taut 
in order that they may be fitted to make music. So our 
energies must be keyed to a pitch of activity to make us 
efficient Christians." His diligence was extraordinary. 



* 



* His letters indicate this throughout. In the first of the three follow- 
ing extracts he refers to his labors on Monday, usually thought to be the 
minister's rest-day after the strain of the Sabbath : 

" I have just returned from my fifth service to-day. Ten o'clock at the 



A CHARACTER SKETCH 187 

Seven days each week were as full as continuous demands on 
his time could make them. He never refused to speak at a 
meeting or to act on a committee where it was possible for 
him to do so without conflict with other engagements. His 
door-bell, which he called " almost the greatest trial of my 
life," rang from morning till night, announcing applicants for 
advice or sympathy or pecuniary help. We get a suggestion 
of its diligent jingling in the following note, which describes 
his return from a summer vacation and the swarm of callers 
who waylaid him on his first appearance : 

" We reached Boston safely and speedily, and were home 
at 2 p.m. A royal welcome awaited us — all my clients and 

dependents having scented my coming from afar. Dr. A 

was at the house awaiting me to consult about the interests of 
China, and that great empire with a third of the human race 
was considered and its vast interests disposed of in twenty 

minutes. Then D came in to grapple with the affairs 

of the training-school and its more than a dozen applicants 
waiting to be attended to. While I was in consultation with 
him a young Scotchman came for help and counsel. Having 
spent his ' little all ' in search for employment, and being now 
penniless, he had heard of me, and had been anxiously look- 
ing for my arrival as the one ray of light in his dark prospect. 

Congregational ministers' meeting, address on the Sunday question ; 
3 P.M., Executive Committee meeting at Tremont Temple ; 4 P.M., Bethel 
Board; 7:30, Standing Committee meeting at the church; 8:30, Sunday- 
school Union meeting at the church. Ought not one to get tired out and 
talked out? But I came home full of joy. Four came before us for bap- 
tism — and such conversions as I have rarely seen." 

" I am wanted at two places this evening, both important, for ' no 
license' and for ' church extension.' Am on the fence as to which to 
choose." 

. . . Oh that I were three and could make for myself three taber- 
nacles of usefulness — one for Boston, one for Raleigh, and one for the 
Missionary Union urging me to go to Pittsburg next week!" 



1 88 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

While talking with him another edged his way into the parlor 
wearing that peculiar look of sanctimonious sheepishness 
which I can never certainly interpret whether the bearer waits 
to profess religion or to get married. In this case it was the 
latter, and the transaction awaits completion. It was nearly 
dark before I got through with these, and I had sat down for 
a hurried meditation on my Sunday's sermon when the bell 
rang, and I found a man panting for breath on the front steps, 
so exhausted that he could not get his wind sufficiently to 
articulate for some minutes. I recognized him as an old 
offender of twelve years' standing, but I did not on that ac- 
count shut up my bowels of compassion against him. A tall, 
lank, long-haired man with a bundle of documents under his 
arm was the next. He wanted me to assist in calling a great 
meeting to expose the iniquities of Freemasonry, and made 
my blood curdle by reciting the formula of initiation used in 
this order. Well, you see I had a royal greeting home." 

His patience was, from a psychological point of view, mar- 
velous. Such constant intrusions, such various and frequent in- 
terruptions, such unremitting labor, such continuous expen- 
diture of vitality, would have kept most men in a chronic 
condition of nervous irritability. Yet no one ever reported a 
single outbreak of petulance, a single expression of impatience, 
in his whole career. His heart kept a "high, calm, spheric 
frame," undisturbed by the exasperating incidents which beset 
every one who has to deal largely with the helpless, the 
broken, and the weak. For it could be said of him, as Eras- 
mus said of Sir Thomas More, that he was " patron-general 
to all poor devils." "Let scientific charity look after the 
worthy poor," he used often to say ; "my mission is to the un- 
worthy." And it must be said, in justice to him, that he 
had a fairly representative and numerous constituency of this 
class. He would laughingly speak of the two tramps, whom 
he overheard one evening when walking along a neighboring 



A CHARACTER SKETCH 189 

street, one of whom sententiously remarked, " It's wan eighty- 
two " (the number of Dr. Gordon's house) ; and again of a 
half-intoxicated wastrel who inquired of him while passing 
" where the institooshun on Brookline Street " was, referring 
also to his home. Yet these personifications of poverty and 
sin who came to his lower porch for charity were treated with 
an unfailing courtesy and tenderness. " ' Remember them that 
are in bonds, as bound with them,' " he was wont to say. " If 
you are temperate and prosperous and fortunate, you are 
called upon to share the sorrows of the drunkard's wife and 
the trial of the widow's poverty and the pain of the sick man's 
couch. As bowidwith thtm! ' I don't sign my name to any 
man's bond,' says a shrewd business man. In business that 
may be a right principle, but in religion we are called on to 
be bondsmen for any poor, suffering brother who asks it of 
us. If sickness has put a mortgage on his body, or poverty 
has fixed an attachment on his goods, the Bible tells us we must 
consent to be bound with him." 

That he lived up to this high standard the day of his funeral 
attested. He doubtless knew many a face in the throng of 
poor that passed his coffin that morning, though they were 
strangers to all others. " Dr. Gordon's study," writes a well- 
known pastor,* " was in the back of the church, in the second 
story, directly over the rear entrance. Wishing to see him 
one day, I shook and rattled the door. The window of the 
study slowly opened, his face appeared, and when I told him 
what I wanted, he took his key from his pocket and tossed it 
down with the words, ' Come up.' He lived above the rest 
of us, but was always ready to share the heights with any who 
wished, and tossed the key to his secrets to any who sought 
them. He always worked with door open for all who cared 
enough for him and his to seek, knock, and climb. A thou- 
sand might pass the silent study on the noisy street and give 
* Rev. O. P. Gifford, D.D. 



190 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

no thought to him, but whenever a man wanted what he had, 
the want was met as soon as help was sought. No book in 
his library was too good to be loaned, no experience too deep 
to be shared, no hour too busy to be yielded to the life in need. 
With the upward look and the upper room he partook with 
the apostles of the baptism of the Spirit, and sought to make 
practical application of the truth to life." 

His unwearied patience in committees, where contending 
opinions pulled and tugged like the four horses in Plato's 
fable, was often remarked. The most outrageous filibustering 
never ruffled his pellucid temper. The same evenness and 
control were conspicuous in his letters. Nothing could be 
more vexing than the assurance with which problems in 
eschatology, so easy to propound, so impossible to solve, were 
put before him by unknown correspondents in Iowa or in 
Texas, as if he were a new oracle holding in his breast the 
secrets of the age to come. These he would answer as best 
he could in his slow, cramped, peculiar handwriting. Some- 
times, of course, such answers were necessarily concise. At 
one time he wrote a mere outline of his view, and added, in 
closing, his regrets that he had then no time to amplify. He 
received a reply some months later in which the writer re- 
marked, " It is certainly fortunate for me that your time was 
so limited. I have already spent nine weeks in attempting 
to decipher the handwriting of your note, and am not nearly 
done yet!" His correspondence was extensive, and, like 
Molinos, he directed by this means the spiritual life of a widely 
distributed circle of Christians. 

The same trait of patient considerateness was prominent in 
his estimate of others, especially of those with whom he dis- 
agreed. "We believe we ought to contend earnestly for 
the faith once delivered to the saints," he once said, "but in 
doing this we should seek to be like the saints once delivered to 
the faith" He always aimed to keep experimental religion to 






A CHARACTER SKETCH 191 

the front and the conflicting theories of belief in the back- 
ground. " Theology begets strife ; salvation genders unity. 
The saints fight over doctrine ; they weep together over sin- 
ners." In his utterances no man was ever more circumspect. 
His tongue was as completely subject to his will as ever 
Hebrew slave to Egyptian taskmaster. Exaggerations, harsh 
comments, misinterpretations, caricatures, distortions, rash or 
thoughtless statements, never fell from his lips. He never 
had, therefore, to retreat from the positions which his words 
had chosen and fortified. 

Criticism and opposition he endured without recrimination. 
"A Christian," he says, " should be a patient, undaunted, 
undiscouraged torch-bearer for Christ. If a storm of abuse 
should chance to break upon him, he is to stand in statue-like 
indifference to it all, holding forth the Word of life. If 
blasts of ridicule dash him in the face, he is to take it as 
silently and as imperturbably as the bronze figure takes the 
tempest. It is the man who stands that moves the world." 
And again, "The opprobrium of truth identifies us with 
Christ in the tenderest and closest sense. It was not, surely, 
greediness for contempt which led Paul to glory in the cross 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. By it, he tells us, he was crucified 
unto the world, and the world unto him. That which cut him 
off from men joined him the more closely to the Lord ; that 
which oppressed him from the human side liberated him to- 
ward the divine." Yet this meekness was "never to the 
abatement of firmness in maintaining principle. His upright- 
ness was inflexible, and when need arose intrepid. The hand 
that could carry the grapes of Eshcol with a touch so delicate 
as not to disturb their bloom could, when occasion demanded, 
seize the sword of the Lord and hew Agag to pieces before 
him." * The unpopularity of a doctrine had nothing to do 
with his adhesion thereto. For him there was but one test— 
* Dr. Arthur T. Pierson, article in " Missionary Review," April, 1895. 



192 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 






the will of Jesus Christ. His obedience to God was as un- 
questioning as that of the legionaries to Caesar. Much as he 
disliked controversy, the imminent probability of trouble never 
tempted him to curtail or conceal the least essential of his 
convictions. " Better the church militant battling for the 
truth than the church complaisant surrendering the truth for 
the sake of peace. The Prince of Peace is a man of war. 
Let us be less afraid of contention for the truth than of com- 
munion with error." 

In nothing, indeed, was he greater than in that rare grace, 
humility. "The way to see the divine light," says an old 
proverb, "is to put out thine own candle." Simeon Stylites 
was not more sensible of his unworthiness. Unlike him, how- 
ever, Gordon never, by dwelling on his unworthiness, betrayed 
a consciousness of this humility. He quietly implied it by 
giving to others the precedence at all times. " Who of us is, 
after all, worthy, Mr. Roberts? " he once said to the superin- 
tendent of the Industrial Home, when interceding for some 
vagabond who had forfeited all claims on charity by his in- 
gratitude and dishonesty. And at another time he writes : 

"As to the absence of my kindred from church— well, I 
am sorry. How easy it is to backslide! I feel this myself, 
and wonder what I should be without the stimulus of helpful 
circumstances." 

And again, writing from Northfield to his wife : 

" How wonderful it all is that I, so little time ago washing 
wool and tending the cards in the place where you are, should 
be here in this mount of privilege, with such honor put upon 
me as teacher and co-laborer with the greatest and best! To 
God be all the glory. How little could I have foreseen all 
this! How little could I have brought it about! " 

In a letter written to a friend in London soon after his re- 
turn in '$>%, we find this striking sentence, " Redemption from 
beginning to end is a problem in loss and gain, in which — 



A CHARACTER SKETCH 193 

strange paradox!— the magnitude of our gain is determined 
by the multitude of our losses. The highest bidder for the 
crown of glory is the lowliest bearer of the cross of self-denial." 
These maxims were adopted as a working program for his 
daily life. Self-renunciation became to him the primary law 
of conduct. In the larger and more noteworthy sacrifices of 
life this rule is often not so exacting as might at first appear. 
Signing checks for good causes, registering one's name in sub- 
scription lists, discommoding one's self for good friends— there 
are in all these hidden but recognizable compensations which 
return to us like those indemnifying benefits which politicians 
claim to find in indirect taxes. It is a joy to be the ' ' servant 
of the servants of God." There is a perceptibly suffusing 
pleasure even in stripping off one's coat and handing it to the 
beggar, as St. Martin did, provided the act is noted by observ- 
ing eyes. But the real, the crucial test comes in the little 
crucifixions, the unnoticed and apparently insignificant self- 
denials. It is hard to be the servant of the ungrateful and 
the unworthy. It is hard to pay the direct, the summary 
assessments on one's convenience and leisure. To ride late 
in dreary cars that some little county conference may have 
the inspiration of your thought and the impulse of your words ; 
to intervene in behalf of unpopular causes when, if your friends 
are not scandalized, they are at least silent ; to resign the 
brief moment of rest at the fireside, putting on coat and hat 
and going out into the cold, that some man may have his bed 
or some woman her groceries — in short, to stand ready to be 
spent to the last fragment of personal comfort, to empty one's 
pockets of all the small change of unoccupied time, this indeed 
is the trial of one's unselfishness. It was in these ungrudging 
services that the rarer and more superlative excellences of Dr. 
Gordon's character were most conspicuous. Bonhomie and 
kind-heartedness he had in no limited measure ; but far be- 
yond this was the high genius for self-abnegation. 



194 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

As with Luther, love of music was one of his most striking 
characteristics. Though without a musician's training, he 
edited with peculiar discrimination two hymn-books, and wrote 
admirable and much-used tunes for fifteen or more hymns. 

Hymnology was, indeed, his only diversion, a spring of re- 
freshment and a means of relaxation after tension, as fiction is 
to most men. Matching in spare moments old hymns to new 
tunes, writing either hymns or tunes as the case required, 
humming into being new melodies as he went to sleep, singing 
the old ones with his family till all throats were hoarse and all 
lungs weary save his own— here was his unfailing resource. 
And so responsive was he to music that a few chords would 
often suffice to bring him downstairs to the side of the piano, 
as if an invisible, yet no less potent, spell were working. 

His setting of the well-known words, " My Jesus, I Love 
Thee/' is familiar wherever hymns are sung by men and 
women of the English tongue. It was sung by thousands in 
jerseys and bonnets on that sad day when the mother of the 
Salvation Army was laid away to rest. Many have been the 
interesting ncidents connected with it. On one occasion in 
New York, after some great meeting, he was met by a hand- 
some and stately young woman who had been a singer of dis- 
tinction in opera. Disillusioned of a career of excitement, 
sick at heart of the pride of life, filled with yearning for she 
hardly knew what, she had sat down at the piano in the recep- 
tion-room of the hotel where she was staying, and opening 
haphazard a hymnal which lay on the rack, had played the 
first number she turned to. It was " My Jesus, I Love Thee." 
She sang verse after verse. Before she had finished she had 
gone through the whole experience — tears, repentance, for- 
giveness, peace! For more than a year, now, she had given 
herself to humble mission work in the metropolis. 

At another time, after he had spoken at a large meeting 
in a Canadian city, at which the provost of the town presided, 



A CHARACTER SKETCH 195 

this hymn was given out. It was sung with great power and 
fervor by the congregation. Happening to look at the chair- 
man, he was surprised to see him giving way to emotions of 
uncontrollable grief. After the services were over he went 
with him to his home. In the quiet of his library he told 
Gordon how his only son had passed away some weeks before 
in his arms singing the same blessed hymn. 

Like Luther, too, he was, above all, fond of children. 
None knew better than his own with what tenderness he could 
share their sorrows, with what almost vicarious willingness he 
hurried to take upon himself their difficulties and their trials. 
A note to a little five-year-old nephew, printed in roman 
letters and capitally illustrated, which lies before us is worthy 
to be placed alongside the great Reformer's singularly beautiful 
letter to his boy Hans. No one ever had a surer entrance 
into children's hearts. No one ever better knew what to say 
to them on all occasions. His addresses to the children of 
the church — so simple, so transparent, so charming — were the 
wonder of all. But those who knew him in his home relations 
understood the secret of their charm. It sprang from an 
acquaintance with child character which results only from 
long companionship and sympathy. 

As a teller of marvelous tales he had few equals. What 
multiplex incident! What extraordinary involutions! What 
unexpected denouements! His art was that of the magician 
who draws yard upon yard of ribbon from his mouth. For 
these stories were nigh endless, and ran night after night, like 
the plays in Chinese theaters. That of " Guggles "—the name 
is sufficiently suggestive of its droll character— was perhaps 
his masterpiece. His elaborate improvisations on themes 
drawn from Grimm ran a close second. Never was he happier 
than in the nursery with a lapful of babies hypnotized by his 
thrilling incidents and vivid descriptions. "Tell Theodora 
how constantly I think of her, and that I am getting some 



196 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

five-story stories to tell her at bedtime when I get home," he 
writes from Canada in the midst of an arduous missionary 
campaign. 

His drawings, too, were always in great requisition. With 
that irresistible power of enchantment which seemed to dwell 
in the stub of his pencil he summoned them forth from the 
paper— rows of sleepy listeners in church, files of bald-pated 
deacons, groups of fantastic faces suggestive, in their physiog- 
nomic eccentricities, of the innumerable oddities who turned 
up weekly at his home with bizarre theories and quaint ex- 
planations of prophecy. I have since thought, in calling to 
mind these sketches, that while he sat patiently drawing for a 
group of interested heads about him, he was all the time en- 
joying a mild revenge in these caricatures, and that inwardly 
there was much quiet satisfaction over the distorted noses and 
undisciplined hair. 

One of his specialties in the pictorial line had to do with 
the escapades and activities of a little brownie folk made of 
straight lines and minute capital circles. The battles of these 
linear people, their winter sports and summer rambles, their 
household mishaps, their ludicrous employments, constituted a 
perpetual vaudeville of nonsense for children and grand- 
children. 

Furthermore, he possessed — oh, rare delight of youngsters! 
— an almost Helvetic skill in wood-carving. To recount the 
various amusing and play-provoking things which his deft 
fingers whittled out would be to give an inventory of the 
contents of a well-stocked toy-shop. Miniature farming tools, 
houses, barns, churches, animals, were released one by one 
from the enveloping thraldom of a pine block by his emanci- 
pating penknife, as Ariel was released from the riven oak. 
Besides this, he would make watering-carts out of tomato cans 
mounted on wheels, transparencies for campaign purposes out 
of old soap-boxes, and "keroogians," an invention of his own— 



A CHARACTER SKETCH 197 

bits of glass of various lengths strung on strings, and arranged 
in the order of the notes of the scale — on which he would 
play long " kinder symphonies," to the infinite amusement of 
little folks. 

This ingenuity was apparent even in the discipline of chil- 
dren. Who ever used his gift of imagination more cleverly 
in the unwelcome task of getting an appetiteless three-year- 
old to eat? This is how he managed. Froebel himself could 
not have done better : 

" Theodora is well and happy. She does not eat any better 
than ever, but Elsie and I manage that. To-day the milk- 
cup was a steam fire-engine and her mouth the tenement 
where the conflagration was raging. I rang the table-bell vio- 
lently, and as the engine rushed down the street she allowed the 
fire to be put out to the extent of a cupful of milk poured in." 

A letter or two will illustrate these traits. In the first the 
Congo Mission and his last baby occupy him alternately. In the 
last his children in New Hampton are sent some timely advice. 

" My constant thought has been of you, mother and child, 
Iadora * and Theodora. Everybody I met, whether from the 
far West or frozen North, congratulated me and inquired for 
you both. I have really hardly waked up to the event that 
has taken place in our home as viewed by the great public, 
and wonder now that I have been so reserved and so self- 
contained. I knew, or thought I knew, that we had a well- 
spring of joy in our house, but how far the streams thereof 
had flowed to make glad the great Baptist constituency, I had 
not taken in till, by the warm grasp of the hand from scores 
at every station crowding round to do us honor, I w r as made 
fully aware of it. All seemed to have known it whom I met 
on the train — that is, that another olive plant had sprouted 
about my table— and even the hackmen, as I stepped out 
from the cars at various points along the line, nudged and 
* " I adore her." of course. 



1 9* ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

winked at each other, whispering I know not what except, 
1 That is the proud parson.' . . . 

" Theodora still continues to be the brightest star in the 
Milky Way. Give the little dairymaid my best wishes for 

success in her earliest occupation. . . . Mr. H 's son 

came in for a little time in the evening, and sat, with cigar in 
hand, and sometimes in mouth, talking of the virtues of his 
dead father and of his prospective departure for the beach to 
spend the summer. And I thought of that good father's pro- 
found interest in the Congo Mission, and wondered why he 
did not leave his fortune to that work instead of endowing 
one solitary son to smoke and saunter at summer resorts. I 
hope our children may be endued, but not endowed, especially 
Theodora now pasturing in the land of milk and honey. May 
she get strength and sustenance therefrom to bless the world. 
I believe your own temperate living and temperance lecturing 
will bear rich fruit in children and children's children. May 
it prove so especially with Theodora. May she be a living 
stone polished after the similitude of a palace. On the cars 
the prospects of the Congo Mission were much talked of by all 
whom I met. Generally the voice was favorable and the 
sentiments strong. I am in for it, and am bound to organize 
a new society to carry it on unless justice is done it. With 
myself for president, and you for collector, and Arthur and 
Helen for home and foreign secretaries, we could do it. Haley, 
Ernest, Elsie, and Theodora will of course be on the executive 
committee. The last, I am sure, under the tuition of her pres- 
ent appetite, would be ready to vote for large supplies. I 
sincerely trust that the little maiden may be delivered from 
colic, and that the winds in her little cave of yEolus may be 
laid and kept at rest. I speak, of course, paregorically. Now 
may the God of peace be with you all, protecting, keeping, 
guarding you. May he cause all grace to abound in you al- 
ways." 



A CHARACTER SKETCH 199 

"Dear Children: How I envy you the joy of being 
together in that lovely retreat. Now I send you my list of 
cautions and instructions. They are as follows : 

"i. Give ample time for prayers each morning. Examina- 
tions are over, and there need be no hurrying off now. Sing 
a hymn and take turns in leading. 

" 2. Do not rush too rapidly into farm work, but begin very 
slowly till you get inured to it, and look out for sunstroke. 

" 3. Have a good solid three hours of reading aloud. 

" 4. Don't run any risk in going into the river. Go together 
if at all, and watch over each other. 

" 5. Look out for the horse. "Ide rbv Innov. Go slow with 
him till you find out his temper. 

" Pray for us that the Word of the Lord may abound 
through us." 

It was in his boyhood home that the geniality of his dispo- 
sition came out most clearly. Relieved for a few weeks from 
the innumerable cares of pastoral life in the city, his spirits took 
on fresh sparkle and animation in the quiet and tender air of 
the New Hampshire country. With what enthusiasm did he 
enter into the simple rustic joys! What delight did he take 
in rambling over the rough pastures with his children for blue- 
berries, in organizing excursions to far-away hilltops and to 
distant lakes, in riding homeward at dusk singing the evening 
hymns of Lyte and Keble, while the glow was still living in the 
west and the whippoorwills were beginning their chant in the 
hollows! In later life these intervals of rest and recreation 
steadily narrowed as the calls for service became more frequent 
and more urgent. Summer conventions broke into small frag- 
ments the short furloughs, while an enormous correspondence, 
the ceaseless rolls of printers' proof, and the continuous intru- 
sion of the outer world gave to what was left the uneasy hur- 
ried character of a half-holiday. Yet, brief as they were, these 



200 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

days were the regenerating tonic which, in anticipation, in 
retrospect, and in immediate enjoyment, strengthened him to 
accomplish the tasks of thirty years. 

" The happiest and most exalted moments I have ever known 
in this life," he writes, " are those when I stand on some high 
outlook of my New Hampshire home, and gaze off upon the 
blue hills in the distance, and see those hills rising range upon 
range, as though they were the very portals of Beulah land. 
There is something indescribable in these mountain-top experi- 
ences, and they never fail to lift me out of myself and bring 
me nearer to God. I shall see the King in his beauty, and 
the land of far distances. ... I have just revisited many 
scenes of my early walks in this so familiar place. I remember 
a tree where I used to go as a boy to pray. Only the stump 
of it remains ; but I could call it to witness, while kneeling 
there, that God had done exceeding abundantly above all 
that I thought or asked. What a change! Who could have 
dreamed it! " 

In New Hampton the abstracted look disappeared, the tense 
determination of spirit relaxed. The mental pictures clustering 
about him here are so different from those of the city life as 
almost to suggest a double personality. One remembers him 
reading, with rich intonation, " High Tide on the Coast of 
Lincolnshire " to his sick child, while the butterflies came in 
the windows and the leaves rippled in the breeze ; or standing, 
watch in hand, in the perspective of the long bridge over the 
Pemigewasset, timing his little sons as they raced to the other 
side after their evening's bath in the river. In later years we 
see him climbing a hill path, a St. Christopher of the mountain- 
side, with his eldest grandson astride his shoulders and grasp- 
ing that transfigured forehead ; or, again, driving a rackful of 
city children to the village, complacently silent amid the clatter 
of tongues and the shrill singing of gospel hymns. 

The coming of these children to New Hampton was during 



A CHARACTER SKETCH 201 

many years a feature of his vacations, He was not content to 
enjoy in selfish meditation, far from the sorrow and poverty 
behind him, the sweet influences of the summer hills, the quiet 
companionship of nature. There were white faces and puny 
frames which needed the regenerating touch of mountain air. 
There were tired mothers to whom a change of surroundings 
and work would mean a renewed lease of life. How could he 
leave such in the straitened warrens of the city while he 
himself was drinking in the air of enlarged landscapes and of 
distant vistas? So for a dozen years or more he had with him, 
in an unoccupied farm-house not far from his own home, from 
fifteen to twenty-five poor children. And as to expense? 
Well, this was how it was met. From his own purse he con- 
tributed much ; friends in the home church helped further ; but 
for their immediate support vegetables, supplies, and cooked 
food were sent in by farmers from the neighboring districts in 
response to the requests which he always made from the pulpit 
of the village church. " I have ministered unto you in spirit- 
ual things," he would say ; " minister ye to the temporal neces- 
sities of these little ones." And so even the vacations were 
unreservedly given over to good works. The local church re- 
ceived a vitalizing impulse on Sundays from one deep taught in 
the Word and ever ready to communicate, and the impulse 
realized itself practically in a tender and helpful charity. What 
a delight these children were to him ! What a fatherly interest 
he took in them all! On one occasion, when a little girl was 
sent up unexpectedly, and no place could be found for her to 
sleep, he went to work with hammer and saw and scantling 
and built a bed for her, hardly finishing it before night arrived. 
The last summer of his life was unusually successful in this 
direction. In a letter to his wife he writes : 

" To-day there was a lawn picnic for the children on the 
farm. Many of the townspeople turned out, and the children 
appeared beautifully. The kindness of the people has been 



202 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

superabundant ; more than could be eaten has been supplied. 
I thanked them publicly. The Dana Meeting-house people 
feel defrauded that they have had so little hand in the business. 
I promised them a chance next year." 

And again : 

" I felt this afternoon that a sight of the joy of the children 
on the farm, as they ran to meet me, was more than a compen- 
sation for all the trouble they have made you and the rest. 
It is an unspeakable treat to them, and they are already mourn- 
ing the shortness of the time remaining for their stay. They 
are going down this evening to sing to blind Uncle Isaac. 
They execute ' I have a song I love to sing ' with real power." 

The tenderness which exhibited itself in his relations to 
children extended even to the weakest animals. All things 
both great and small shared his kindness. Many a manumitted 
mouse has doubtless wondered at the good fortune which befell 
him on being caught in the trap of which a large man with 
silver hair and a kind face was the owner; for it invariably 
meant freedom. In an affluent home on Commonwealth 
Avenue there lives even now a well-fed cat bearing the name 
" Adoniram," who perhaps recalls that wild snowy night when 
a hospitable door was unaccountably opened for him by the 
same man with the same kind face. And to one friend at 
least a verse in an early chapter of Matthew recurred as he saw 
the same man hunting, with a palpitating, unfeathered sparrow 
in his closed palm, for the nest of horsehair whence the bird- 
ling had dropped. 



CHAPTER XVI 

INTERMEZZO 

Dr. Gordon's humor — Negroid and other stories — Quaint experiences — 
Pastoral incidents 

AS has been intimated, Dr. Gordon had a fund of humor 
►. which was inexhaustible — humor of a clean, quaint, 
pointed, genial type with never a suggestion of malice or un- 
friendliness. He was a great maker of puns. This might 
have been suspected by an acute attendant on his preaching. 
He never, indeed, indulged in anything approaching levity 
in the pulpit. But the striking antitheses and clever allitera- 
tions which rose and jumped, now and then, like trout in a 
pool, disclosed what he was likely to be at his dinner-table. 
This vein of humor often bubbled out in happy characteriza- 
tions or in bright repartee. A petition for the removal of a 
noble and useful man from a post of great responsibility was 
once shown him. Glancing at the list of Adullamites who 
had signed it he said wittily, " They are of three classes, I see : 
figureheads, soreheads, deadheads." At another time, when at 
Northfield in charge of the conference, a telegram was received 
from Mr. Moody saying that he could not be present, but that 
he had three helpers, Meyer, Pierson, and Pentecost, who would 
take his place, and adding an encouraging Scripture reference. 
Gordon retorted immediately with a counter-reference (i Cor. 
xvi. 17) : "I am glad of the coming of Stephanas and Fortu- 
natus and Achaicus : for that which was lacking on your part 
they have supplied." 

20 * 



204 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Those who find any incompatibility between humor and 
sanctity forget, doubtless, that the same Maker who brought 
into being the archangels created as well the bill of the toucan 
and the bray of the ass. Humor is — we say it reverently — a 
divine attribute. 

Dr. Gordon's table talk was brimming with this quality. 
Discussions over the deep things of Scripture or the vexed 
problems of missionary polity were frequently followed by 
the free play of anecdote and a restrained raillery. If there 
happened to be an equally skilful racontettr present, stories flew 
back and forth as balls on a tennis-court. Then indeed did 
iron sharpen iron. A story was never told merely for the 
sake of telling, but always in response to some other or in 
illustration of the point under discussion. Quaint pastoral 
experiences, comic coincidences, laughable adventures, would 
come out one by one as the conversation enticed them. 
There was a long cyclus of negroid stories which had to do 
with the " colored " mission of his church, and another series 
pertaining to the children of Erin, with whom his pastoral 
and philanthropic work brought him occasionally in touch. 
The emergence of these stories was always preceded by a 
premonitory suffusion over his face of quiet fun, as of thejight 
which glimmers before the dawn. 

It was his often expressed intention to write out a brief 
volume of the amusing experiences which lightened his long 
pastorate ; but for this entr'acte undertaking he never to the 
last found time. Most of the anecdotes which so amused his 
friends have vanished with him. Yet a few have been col- 
lected by diligent effort, and are reproduced in the following 
pages, that those unacquainted with his family life may get a 
new insight into his character. 

The first of these we are able to give in his own words. It 
was written out at the time when he was calling attention to 
the excesses in church amusements. The old deacon whose 



INTERMEZZO 205 

story he tells was a leading member of the Ebenezer Baptist 
Church. His opinions on theological currents and counter- 
currents were given in all confidence to the friendly pastor, 
and were marked by a shrewdness on which the latter often 
commented. Surprised, no doubt, would he be if he were to 
know how wide has been the circulation of his astute and 
pithy Africanisms. On one occasion they were rehearsed 
before a group of Edinburgh professors, to the amusement of 
all, especially of Dr. Calderwood, the eminent writer on ethics, 
who carefully preserved them in his note-book. Our carpet- 
beating Epictetus is, however, to this day unaware of his 
fame. 

One epigram always pleased Dr. Gordon. "The black 
deacon of our mission church,' , he wrote, " gave us a very 
significant answer not long since. He was complaining of 
his Ethiopian pastor that he did not expound the Word. 
When we expressed surprise and remarked that we had sup- 
posed he did, he replied, ' He can take the Bible apart as 
good as any man I ever seed, but he can't put it together 
again.' This in learned phraseology would mean that he 
excelled in destructive criticism, but not in constructive." 



"'I kicks ag'in' it, sah!' 

" Such was the vehement exclamation of Brother Moses, as 
I met him one day in front of an aristocratic mansion where 
he was busily at work dusting carpets, trimming the lawn, etc. 

" But before I rehearse his sidewalk discourse I must tell 
my reader something about this ebony sage, whom I have 
known now for more than twenty-five years. Like the singer 
in the Canticles, he is ' black, but comely.' Not that he has 
any natural beauty to attract one, but when he becomes ani- 
mated upon spiritual themes the listener forgets his dark 



206 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

visage and thick features, and the ' beauty of the Lord ' seems 
to shine out in his face. 

" My first acquaintance with Moses began thus : 

" Soon after the close of the war, when a considerable influx 
of freedmen toward the North had set in, a Unitarian neighbor 
said to me one day, ' I wish you would call in and see my 
colored man, who has recently come to me from the South. 
I assure you he is a character. He seems to take a great 
interest in the welfare of my soul, and, as he is of your per- 
suasion, I would like you to make his acquaintance. By all 
means get him to tell you of his " experience." ' 

" I called one morning, according to request, and found 
Moses busy in the stable polishing the harnesses and beguiling 
his labors with the weird strains of an old plantation melody. 

"After a pleasant introduction and some interchange of 
Christian fellowship, I said : 

" ' Brother Moses, I wish you would tell me your Christian 
experience if you can spare time for it.* 

" ' I allers has time enough for dat, sail/ he replied, ' and 
allers shall till I puts off dis clay tabernacle, and den I'll hab 
all eternity to tell it in.' And then a shine came into his 
dusky visage more brilliant than that which he was imparting 
to his master's leather. 

" ' It was on de sixth day ob October, 1853/ he continued, 
'at three o'clock in de mornin', in massa's corn-field in ole 
Virginny, dat de Lord spoke peace to my soul. You see, I 
had been a-mournin' for weeks, yet all de while more or less 
confidential in myself, and settin' store by de heaps ob good 
works and prayers and repentin's I'd done. But at last dese 
deceitful refuges began to gib way, and de foundations ob de 
great deep broke up in my soul, and for three days and nights 
I could neither eat nor drink nor sleep, a-mournin' and a- wail- 
in' for my sins. At last, nigh sunrise in de third day, out in 
de corn-field, I sez, " Lord, you must save dis despairin' 



INTERMEZZO 207 

sinner or he'll die. I know I'se wicked and vile and rebellious, 
but den you'se all-merciful and forgivin'. Dat's your reputa- 
tion, Lord, and I begs you for de sake of your great name to 
show mercy and not judgment." And so I cried and pleaded 
dere on de ground. Den de Lord 'peared to me in de visions 
ob de mornin' and reached out his hand to me ; but he didn't 
reach it out to me flatways as though he had any bread ob 
life to gib to my hungry soul. Time hadn't come yet for 
dat. But he reached out his hand edgeways toward me ; 
and if dat hand had been a sharp two-edged sword it couldn't 
cut me open quicker'n it did ; separatin' de j'ints and de mar- 
rer, and laym* bare de corruption ob my heart. I never 
dreamed what a heap ob blackness dere was in dat heart till 
dat mornin\ But just den I heerd a mighty noise, which 
made me tremble from head to foot, and I sez, "Lord, 
what's dat rumblin'?" And he sez, "Dat's your sins a-fallin' 
into hell." Den, quicker'n I can tell, he reached out his hand 
ag'in, so kinder soft and tender, and closed me up, and didn't 
leave a rent or a scar or a sore place in my heart, and he sez 
to me, " Son, dy sins, which is many, is forgiben dee." Den 
I knowed I'd been born ag'in; dat old things was passed 
away, and all things had become new. Happified was I. 
From de risin' ob de sun to de goin' down ob de same dat 
day, it Reared like I was in heben, a-standin' on de sea ob 
glass, wid de harp ob God in my hand, and golden slippers 
on my feet, singin' de song ob Moses and de Lamb. 

" ' From dat day I'se been surer dat I'se borned ag'in dan I 
am dat I was borned de fust time ; for I can't nowise remem- 
ber my fust birth, but de second I'll remember all eternity, 
and never cease to praise de Lamb dat redeemed me. 

" - Dat's my experience. Some folks don't believe it, but I 
knows it, for it's what I'se tasted and seen/ 

" Now I dare say that my readers, having listened to this 
extraordinary story, will conclude that any one capable of 



208 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

such highly wrought enthusiasm as this would have very little 
sober sense or solid judgment for the ordinary affairs of the 
church of Christ. On the contrary, Moses, becoming a dea- 
con in a colored church not long after my first acquaintance 
with him, has used the office so well, and gained for himself 
such a good degree, that by general consent he is now re- 
garded as a very pillar and stay among his brethren. His 
good judgment in managing the affairs of God's house has 
constantly surprised me ; even more have I been impressed 
with his fine discernment of evangelical truth, and his deep 
insight into the problems of Christian life and experience. 
Certainly he must have been profoundly taught of the Spirit ; 
and I can say sincerely that I am always spiritually refreshed 
by my wayside conversations with him, and that if I should 
ever be in great affliction or darkness of mind, I can think of 
no one to whom I should more readily turn for consolation 
than to black Moses. 

" But now to the sidewalk discourse. 

" ' Have you any special religious interest in your church? ' 
I asked Moses, after his few words of hearty greeting on the 
occasion referred to. 

" ' No room for any interest/ he replied ; ' de church is so 
lumbered up wid fairs and festibals and jollifications dat de 
Sperit's got no chance to work among us. Leastwise dat's 
my solemn 'pinion, dough some sez I'se heady and setful. 
But I'se sick of it, sah! I goes to church Sunday, after prayin' 
to be in de Sperit on de Lord's day, and de fust thing de 
minister gets up and reads a long program of de worldly doin's 
and goin's for de week — de music and de supper and de 
gramatic readings and what not ; twenty-five cents admission, 
and all must come. I tell ye, I kicks ag'in' it, sah, and will 
long's I hab bref in my body.' 

" ' What do you mean by saying that you kick against it? ' 
I asked. 



INTERMEZZO 209 

" ' I rebukes it, sah, in de name ob de Lord. Last Sunday 
I spoke out in meetin' and said, " Breddren, what's ye been 
redeemed for and brought into de church? Didn't de Lord 
tell you dat you'se to be de light ob de world and de salt ob 
de earth? Well, when I sees how much time some ob you 
gibs to fairs and festibals, and den you can't come to de 
prayer-meetin' 'cause you'se so busy, I sez, if you ever was 
de Lord's true salt, you've lost your flavor, and if you don't 
look out you'll be cast out and trodden underfoot ob men." ' 

" ' But, Brother Moses,' I asked, wishing to draw out fur- 
ther wisdom from this deep fountain, 'don't you think these 
things are necessary for making the church attractive to the 
masses and inviting to the young? ' 

"'No, sah!' he replied, with great warmth; 'no, sah! 
Christians is de salt ob de world, and dey is put into de world 
to preserve it from corruption. But some's got de idee dat 
you must bring de corruption into de church so's to preserve 
de salt, as dough de gospel is goin' to die out unless it's sug- 
ared and seasoned wid carnal 'musements. Dat's de pop'lar 
notion. But I kicks ag'in' it, sah.' 

" ' Yes ; but people say there is no harm in a social gather- 
ing and a plain supper, and a little music and reading for 
entertaining the people,' I continued. 

" ' Well, dat's de question,' replied Moses. ' I takes de 
Scriptures for my standp'int ob faith and practice, and I hab 
searched in vain to find where de 'postles and elders ever got 
up suppers of turkey and chickens and sandwiches and cold 
tongue, and den invited de breddren to come to church and 
eat 'em at twenty-five cents a head. No, brudder; 'muse- 
ments in de church is unsanctifying, howsomever folks may 
think 'bout it. We had a festibal in our meetin'-house two 
weeks back. I looks in a few minutes, and sees de crowds 
dere and de doin's. Fust de pianny and de fiddle strikes up ; 
and sez I, " Take off de 'straint, and how long 'fore dis whole 



210 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

company'd be a-dancin' and a-waltzin' in de house ob God? " 
Den dey had de guess-cake and de waffles, and waffled off a 
calica quilt to de one dat drawed de prize ; and sez I, " What's 
dis but eddicatin' people to gamblin' and lotteries? " Den de 
gramatic reader comes on, all dressed up wid ribbons an' fur- 
belows, an* when I seed her rollin' her eyes an' p'intin' her 
fingers, sez I ag'in, " What's dis but jus' nussin' our young 'uns 
for de stage and de theater? n I tell you, I kicks ag'in' it, 
sah, and allers shall. 

" ' Well, next night was prayer-meetin' ; only twenty out, 
an* all as mum as if de Lord had never opened deir mouths, 
and when I warns em 'bout it dey sez, " Brudder Moses, de 
Sperit didn't move us." And sez I, " De Sperit moved ye fas' 
'nough last evenin' at de festibal, but I'se 'fraid 'twas de 
sperit dat works in de children of disobedience." Brudder, I 
reads it dat dey dat's goin' to wear de crown must bear de 
cross ; but what's we doin' in dese days but 'bolishin' de cross 
and puttin' eatin' and drinkin' and 'musement and 'dulgence 
in de place ob it? And whar's it goin' to end? ' 

" Here Moses pointed furtively to the residence in front of 
which we were standing, and in a confidential tone said, ' De 
folks dat libs here was once 'fessors ob religion, but I reckon 
dey's backslid, for dey don't hab no prayers in de family now, 
and dey's all taken up wid theaters and card-playin' and balls 
and parties. O brudder, I has great sorrer and trabail ob soul 
when I sees how de debbil prowls round and steals de Lord's 
sheep right out ob his fold.' 

" ' Don't you think, Moses,' I asked, ' that the devil works 
harder to lead Christians astray than he does to destroy the 
people of the world ? ' 

"' Don't I thinks? I kpows it, sah. Why d'ye s'pose I 
works and tugs and sweats beatin' dese carpets and doin' dese 
chores? 'Tain't de dollar dat's in my pocket dat I'se workin* 
for ; I'se got dat already. It's de dollars dat's in my employ- 



INTERMEZZO 2 1 1 

er's pocket dat I'se workin' for. So if de Lord has a real 
shure-'nuff saint— one dat's plain stamped wid de image and 
'scrip tion ob de King, and shines like a new silver dollar— de 
debbil, he'll rise up early and sit up late to get hold ob dat one. 
But your 'bandoned sinners and your high-steppin' ones, dat's 
all taken up wid deir moralisms and self-righteousness, he 
doesn't trouble himself 'bout ; he knows he's got dem already.' 
" Here our report of the sidewalk discussion might properly 
end, but it would be an injustice to Moses to leave the impres- 
sion that he is only a sour and censorious critic, who takes 
satisfaction in pointing out the faults of Christians. On the 
contrary, with an indescribable pathos and tenderness, he thus 
concluded his talk: 'Well, brudder, I'se prayin' 'bout it 
night and day. It's 'cause de Lord's children don't think, 
dat dey does so. You remember how he sez, " My people 
don't consider." Well, I'se been on de way now nigh on to 
forty years, and it's been my 'sperience dat a day's consider- 
ing worth more'n a year's workin' ; 'cause when we takes a 
day for considerin' now and den, we get's 'quainted wid de 
Lord, and finds out his secrets, and de Lord tells us jus' what 
he's doin' and what he's a-goin' to do. And, brudder, he tells 
me in my soul I'se goin' to see a great outpourin' ob de Sperit 
afore I dies. Den when Christians gets deir tongues afire, as 
dey did on de day ob Pentecost, how our dross will be burned 
up, and what a cracklin' dere will be in de hay, wood, and 
stubble we'se buildin' into our churches in dese days! But, 
brudder, 'twon't come easy. We'se got to get low before de 
Lord, and be ob one 'cord and in one place. Trouble is now 
dat ebery one's ob a different 'cord ; one wants one thing, and 
'nother wants 'nother. But when we gets where we all wants 
de same thing, so we's satisfied to lib all our days on a crust 
ob bread if we can only hab de Lord and de fullness ob his 
Sperit, den he'll come down like rain on de mown grass ; and 
dat day's a-comin', brudder!' 



212 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

" Reader, Moses is a real character, and not a myth. He 
was born in slavery, and if he is able to read it is only a recent 
acquirement. But his mind is saturated with the Scripture as 
he has caught its phraseology from the rude preachers of his 
race. May it not be that he is one of the ' babes ' to whom 
the Father has revealed some things which he has 'hid from 
the wise and prudent ' ? " 



ii 



The pulpit of this colored church being at one time va- 
cant, various probationers were asked to supply. The stanchly 
conservative deacon took a great interest in the candidates 
who came from time to time, and rigidly tested their ortho- 
doxy and "pulpit style." Of one, who took with the people 
because of a popular narrative quality in his sermon, he com- 
plained on the ground that he was " too fond of retailing anti- 
dotes." Finally he secured a brother from South Carolina, 
sound, hearty, and suitable in every respect. The pastor and 
committee from the white church were invited up to pass 
judgment upon him. Coming in a little late, they found the 
whole gathering swaying back and forth in an ecstasy of reli- 
gious excitement. The preacher, with hair kinky as astrakhan 
wool and a face like polished teak-wood, had worked them to 
a pitch of unusual fervor by his thrilling eloquence. It was a 
veritable plantation homily untainted by sobering New Eng- 
land influences. 

The text was drawn from the Eighty-seventh Psalm : " And 
of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her." 
When the visitors entered, the preacher was maintaining that, 
wherever a man's home might happen to be, his spiritual 
birthplace was of necessity in Zion, the joy of the earth. 
" Let us go to de city ob Charleston," he went on to say, " an', 
hubberin' ober dat great an 1 wicked city, let us shout down 



INTERMEZZO 213 

to de Lord's chillern, 'Whar war yer born?' an' dey will 
holler back, 'We'se born in Zion.' An' den let us go on to 
Richmond an' ask de breddren dere, 'Whar war yer born?' 
an' dey will say too, 'We'se born in Zion.'" So he passed 
on from city to city up the Atlantic seaboard until there were 
none left to question. The appeal was then carried to Green- 
land, and the Christians "libbin' in dat benighted Ian' " were 
asked, " Whar war yer born? " and returned the same unfailing 
answer. " An' now, breddren," he continued, " let us go to de 
north pole, an' twinin' our legs round de pole, let us lift up 
our voices and cry, 'Whar war yer born? ' " The congrega- 
tion was now keyed to the highest tension. Women were 
clutching the seats, men were swaying in tremulous excite- 
ment, as the rhythmic allegory proceeded. 

The visiting committee looked on in astonishment from 
the rear of the church. It was felt that the preacher had 
perforce reached the end of his journey. Not at all. After 
pausing a moment to recover breath, he continued, " Bred- 
dren, let us go on to de east pole" Up to this point Gordon 
had sat as impassive as a statue of Memnon, the twinkle 
of his eye alone suggesting his appreciation of the scene ; but 
the last flight was too much for that self-restraint which had, 
among his people, passed into a proverb. He broke out into 
uncontrollable and agonizing explosions of laughter. 

There were many other black stories of a similar character. 
He used to recall with amusement the testimony of a freshly 
converted brother in the same mission. This man had formerly 
been a devotee of the ball-room, and confessed that, even in 
his renewed state, whenever his ears caught the strident note of 
bow on fiddle his unregenerate feet would begin to move, 
" like de unthinking horse rushing into battle." Gordon would 
tell, too, of one who, commenting on the power of the gospel, 
remarked that it was able " to make the immoral moral, the 
intemperate temperate, and the industrious dustrious." With 



214 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

the negro preachers of reconstruction days, whose chief ambi- 
tion seemed to be to found " universities " in the " black belt," 
with generous powers for conferring degrees, he had in his 
early ministry large experience. His own church was wealthy, 
and well known for its quick response to appeals for help. 
Every few months a shining-faced darky with huge glazed 
bag would call at his house and talk eloquently on the prom- 
ising prospects of a new college or on the great needs of the 
particular region where his people were putting up a church 
building. One of these, with an ingenuous fervor which 
immediately corrected the bad impression his mistake might 
otherwise have conveyed, declared himself to be " in a deplor- 
able state of mendacity." * And another, when required by 
a committee-man with some sharpness to give the reason 
why colored collectors for feeble institutions invariably made 
for the Clarendon Street Church, answered archly, "When we 
goes shootin', sah, we alius goes whar de ducks is." It may 
be added that this retort touched the hearts of the committee 
to the extent of a substantial subscription. 

in 

Of the quaint experiences incidental to every pastor's life Gor- 
don had his full share. Marriages always recall to a minister's 
family much that is amusing. Silk handkerchiefs and walk- 
ing-sticks were to many whom he majried, like the cowry 
shells of African tribes, a convenient legal tender with which 
to pay the customary wedding-fee. Once he received a 
fifty-cent piece, out of which he was asked to " take what he 
thought right." The fact that in seven cases out of ten he 
made over the fee to the bride was deeply appreciated by 
many. This so impressed one whom he married that he re- 
turned in a day or two with a friend and suggested that the 

* i.e., mendicancy. 






INTERMEZZO 2 1 5 

minister might like to pay the latter's fare to New York, 
whither he had been unexpectedly summoned. At funerals, 
too, the grotesque often entered unbidden, as when a bereaved 
husband requested Dr. Gordon to give out the doxology while 
the friends were assembling. 

In visiting among the poor, the pitiful and the droll were 
commingled now and then in a startling way. One poor 
creature, in relating the various misfortunes which had befallen 
her, declared that some years before she had been " struck 
with h'ghtnin'." " I went to the cupboard when I realized 
what had happened," she continued, "and took a strong 
emetic. After I had thrown up the electric fluid I soon re- 
covered. " 

During the revival of '77 the after-meetings were held, as 
has been mentioned, in the Clarendon Street Church. One 
evening Gordon was called to the rear of the church by an 
Irishman, who acknowledged that he was seeking light, but 
who refused to talk with any save the pastor. " I want to 
see Dr. Garrdon. I'm goin' to give him the priferince, ,, he 
reiterated again and again. The two talked together some 
time. Finally the son of Erin, who had been an outrageous 
drunkard, declared himself converted. He was not seen again 
for nearly a year. One smiling day in June, however, he 
turned up at the pastor's house in best clothes and happiest 
vein. This time there was another with him. He related 
how he had found work in the country as a coachman, how 
he had stood without drinking for a twelvemonth, and how 
he had won the heart of the cook in his master's establish- 
ment. "Shure an' we talked over the question of parsons 
atwixt us," he continued, " and decided to give Dr. Garrdon 
the priferince." But unfortunately " Dr. Garrdon " was away 
and was not to return till evening. It was agreed that the 
betrothed should separate till later and visit among their re- 
spective friends. The decision was, alas ! fatal. The " fri'nds " 



216 ADONIRAM JUDSON CORDON 

of the groom were of a dubious, dangerous sort, and before 
lie left them for the minister's home he had spent his all and 
changed his best clothes at the pawnbroker's for others of a 
very doubtful respectability. The wedding was now out of 
the question. He determined, however, to keep his engage- 
ment. It so happened that when he called Gordon himself 
went to the door. The battered, half-sober figure on the steps 
greeted him with his whole serio-comic story, and then added 
that, though he had " fri'nds " in the city who unquestionably 
would lend him enough to get back to his work, he had de- 
cided, in placing his loan, " to give Dr. Garrdon the priferince, 
as he knew him to be a ginerous, free man." 

There can be little question that the unfriendly treatment 
which prophecy often receives at the hands of Christians is 
half due to the eccentricities of those strange folk who cherish a 
special delight for fantastic interpretations. One of these, a 
correspondent from the far West, was accustomed to write 
Dr. Gordon the most extravagantly long and perversely ir- 
rational letters on the Apocalypse. These he sent in the 
largest-size government envelops, every inch of which would 
be covered with titles and degrees. 

Of a visit received from another of this ilk, Gordon 
often spoke with amusement. On entering the parlor one 
morning, he was startled by the peremptory question, " Do 
you believe this Book?" which accompanied the vigorous 
shaking of a Bagster Bible in front of his face. 

" I think I do," was the quiet reply. 

" Do you believe it from cover to cover? " inquired the 
stranger again. 

"Yes." 

" From Genesis to Revelation? " 

"I do." 

"Then we can proceed to business." After a pause the 



INTERMEZZO 2 1 7 

visitor continued abruptly, " Who are the two witnesses in 
Revelation xi.? " 

" I am not sure, though I have my own opinion," replied 
Gordon. 

"They are," retorted the other, with great positiveness, 
"myself and Mr. Moody." 

This statement was indeed startling, but the request which 
followed was even more so. " Now," said he, " I will tell 
you what I am here for. I want you to call a meeting to 
ordain me for the ministry." 

" But why don't you get those who are acquainted with 
you to do this for you — some one in your own town who 
knows your history and your qualifications?" returned Dr. 
Gordon. 

" Well, to tell the truth," he replied, in a confidential tone, 

" they say in W , where I come from, that I am not quite 

level-headed ; but I am." 

" Yes," answered Gordon, encouragingly. 

"Yes; I learned some time ago that my head has two 
poles, one positive, the other negative. Now every morning, 
when I get up, I go to the glass and, putting my hands to 
my head " (which he proceeded to do by way of illustration), 
" I bring those poles into proper balance. That makes me 
level-headed for the day." 

With this explanation, and with a few words of regret that 
Dr. Gordon did not see fit to induct him into the ministry, 
he seized his hat, made for the door, and disappeared. 

IV 

It may not be out of place to record here the following in- 
teresting experience : 

" Opening my mail one morning," writes Dr. Gordon, " I 
found a most earnest appeal from a poor student in whom I 



2i8 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

had for some time taken much interest. He detailed the cir- 
cumstances by which, in spite of his utmost endeavors, he had 
been brought into rare straits; debts for board and books 
severely pressing him until he was utterly discouraged. He 
was extremely reluctant to ask aid, and only wrote now, he 
said, to tell me how earnestly he had besought the Lord for 
deliverance and to request my prayers in his behalf. It was 
only a little sum that he needed to help him out of his di- 
lemma — fifty dollars — but it was a great sum for a poor 
student, and he was now asking the Lord to send it. Hav- 
ing read his letter with real sympathy, I continued opening 
my mail, when, to my surprise, the next letter whose seal I 
broke was from a wealthy gentleman, expressing great thank- 
fulness for a service I had rendered him a few days before, 
and inclosing a check of fifty dollars, which he begged me to 
accept as a token of his gratitude. Instantly I perceived that 
the poor student's prayers were heard— that the second letter 
contained the answer to the first ; and, indorsing the check, I 
sent it by return mail to the young man, with my congratu- 
lations for his speedy deliverance. The noon mail of the 
same day brougl.t another letter of the same sort from another 
college. A young colored man, full of faith and earnest desire 
to fit himself for useful service in the Lord's work, had made 
himself known to me some months before ; and as he had, by 
his earnest piety and diligent scholarship, approved himself 
to his teacher, I had done what I could to help him. He 
now wrote, telling a pathetic story of his struggles, how spar- 
ingly he had lived, how he had failed in getting help from ex- 
pected sources, and how now, having reached the end of the 
term, he was in debt and had nothing to pay. He too had 
called earnestly upon the Lord, but as yet no help had come. 
To show me how prudently he had lived he inclosed a list 
of his expenditures, which demonstrated clearly enough how 
poorly he had fared. Toward night I was at the telegraph 









INTERMEZZO 219 

office writing a despatch to the poor student to say that I 
would be responsible for one half of the amount needed pro- 
vided he could raise the other half from Mr. W . But 

what his street number was I could not remember; neither 
could I recall just the amount needed. So I went back to 
the house to find his letter in order to get the exact address. 
On my way I called at a certain place to pay a b\\\— thirty- 
seven dollars and fifty cents. I had written a check for the 
sum, and as I passed it in to the bookkeeper, he turned his 
book to look up the account, and said, ' This bill is paid, sir ; 
you do not owe us anything.' ' Who paid it ? ' I inquired. ' I 
cannot say; only I know that it was settled several weeks 
ago.' And so saying he handed back my check. I took it, 
quite surprised to find myself so much better off than I ex- 
pected, and returned to my house to find the poor student's 
letter. Referring to it, I found that, in adding up his little 
list of debts, it came to just thirty-seven dollars % and fifty cents. 
The Lord had provided the exact amount even to the cents. 
I had only to indorse the Lord's check again and send it for- 
ward. 

" Mark you, it was not my prayers that were answered, for 
I had not been moved especially to pray for these young men, 
not being aware of the necessity. It was not my money ; the 
Lord provided the exact funds in each instance; but I have 
told you literally what happened. Does not the Lord know 
how to provide? " 

A strange incident occurred in the vestry of Dr. Gordon's 
church shortly before his death. He was standing after meet- 
ing, conversing with a few friends, when the sexton stepped 
up to tell him that some one in the lobby insisted on seeing 
him immediately. Going out in response to the call, he was 
accosted by a man with harsh, deep-cut features and a blotched 
face, who demanded money for a night's lodging in a rough, 



220 ADOKIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

peremptory tone. Dr. Gordon replied gently that he would 
help him, and took out his pencil to write an order. This 
seemed, however, only to embitter the stranger. He broke 
out in violent abuse of society and of the church, denouncing 
God as responsible for his poverty and for the miserable estate 
into which he had fallen. In the course of this outburst he 
disclosed the fact that he had been that day discharged from 
prison after serving a long sentence for theft. 

After several vain attempts to quiet him, Gordon desisted 
altogether, thinking that the man's excitement would soon 
subside. Meanwhile another had entered the hallway and 
stood listening intently. When the former paused for a mo- 
ment's breath, the new-comer stepped forward and, placing 
his hand on his shoulder, began telling him slowly and mi- 
nutely the story of the crucifixion. Pie described in detail the 
choosing of Barabbas, the procession to Golgotha, the mock- 
ery of the soldiers. 

Then he spoke of the malefactors. "They nailed him be- 
tween two thieves," said he. " One of them abused him and 
cursed him ; the other repented, w r as forgiven, and received 
the promise of the eternal companionship of Jesus." He 
stopped and asked slowly, " Do you know who that man 
was ? " 

" No," retorted the other, his harsh tone softening some- 
what with curiosity ; " I never heard." 

" Well," said he, with emotion, " it was I. For years I 
lived the life of a thief and outcast; for years I broke the 
laws of God and man. Finally I was caught and put in jail 
over in Charlestown. There I stayed month after month. 
In the quiet of my cell I saw a face, sad, tear-stained, look- 
ing at me with beseeching eyes. It followed me out of 
prison ; it met me in a little mission down-town ; it con- 
strained me, and I yielded. 

" I cried out, ' Remember me, Lord Jesus, when thou com- 



INTERMEZZO 221 

est in thy kingdom/ Immediately the promise of Paradise 
came to my heart. 

" I was that malefactor! " 

There was a moment of perfect stillness. Then the stranger 
said in a low voice, " Yes, and I was the other." 

Then he went out. 



CHAPTER XVII 

"CHRIST FOR THE WORLD" 

The significance of the modern missionary movement— Misapprehensions 
concerning it — Dr. Gordon's work for this cause — The International 
Conference of Missions in London— The Scotch campaign — Chair- 
man of the Executive Committee, A. B. M. U. — Personal relations 
with missionaries 

JISTORY/'saysSchafrle, "moves on the axis of religion/' 
-1 -L This truth is rarely recognized while history is making, 
but is always apparent when the record is completed and filed 
away in libraries. Most men to-day agree that the present 
century is one of preeminence. Yet its claim to distinction 
lies, according to their thinking, in its career of political, in- 
stitutional, and scientific development. The men of to-mor- 
row, however, we venture to predict, will consider as its most 
noteworthy feature its religious unfoldings. For the first time 
in the history of man religion appears to be losing its local, 
national, and ethnic character, and to be entering upon a uni- 
versal phase. The faiths of the ancient world were for the 
family and for the state. Outsiders who had no share in the 
sacred fire were barbarians, without claims and beyond the 
pale of sympathy and fellowship. Judaism itself was as ex- 
clusive as the religions of the hearth. But when the apostles 
announced the breaking down of the middle wall of partition, 
and proclaimed the unity of Greek and Scythian, of bond and 
free, a new era opened. Nevertheless, far from being a pro- 

222 






" CHRIST FOR THE WORLD" 223 

duct of the age, the new evangel was centuries in advance of 
the age's comprehension, as is clearly seen by the lapse from 
it which followed, and which has made of ecclesiastical history 
a vast parenthesis of error, a terrible deflection from the in- 
tent, teaching, and commands of Jesus and of Paul. This 
hiatus— inscrutably permitted of God— endured from the days 
of the apostles to the period of modern Protestant missions, 
which began with the disembarkation of Carey at Calcutta in 

1793- 

If, as the author of " Ecce Homo " tells us, the missionary 
impulse is the test of a standing or falling church, the church 
of fifteen centuries was essentially decadent. For during 
this whole dark interim her responsibility toward the remote 
and pagan peoples of the earth seems to have been almost 
completely forgotten or ignored. The work of Anskar and 
Boniface and Ulfllas and Columba and John Eliot and Lullius 
is indeed memorable ; yet it was not in the least characteristic 
of the age. Evangelism was discouraged on the ground of 
the unworthiness of the heathen. Turk and Saracen and 
Moor were enemies to destroy, not possible converts and 
brethren in the commonwealth of faith. Whenever prosely- 
tism was entered upon it was the proselytism of the sword, as 
when Charlemagne drove the followers of Wittekind into the 
cold baptismal waters of the Elbe, or when the Jews were 
compelled to church-going on Holy Cross days at Rome. 

We might naturally have looked for some general evange- 
listic impulse at the Reformation did we not remember that 
the Calvinists along the dikes of Holland and inside the forti- 
fications of La Rochelle, as also the Puritans watching for the 
galleons of the Armada off the misty channel headlands, were 
engaged in a struggle for existence which gave little time for 
considering the needs of the dark peoples without in the 
world's penumbra. Even Luther, with all his light, held to 
the curiously inverted theory that, for the bringing back of 



224 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Christ, evangelical religion must cease from off the earth,* 
while his successors, as soon as they were released in some 
measure from fear of the Romish wolf, plunged into intermi- 
nable quarrels over polity and the metaphysics of theology- 
questions which proved as fatal to the missionary motive as 
problems of criticism are in some quarters to-day. Xavier 
and Ricci and Ruggieri, the missionaries of the counter- 
reformation in the East, compounded with heathenism to such 
an extent as to nullify most of the essentials of Christian 
teaching, and finally indulged in fatal political intrigue, which 
resulted in their expulsion. Their brethren in Canada, Jogues 
and Brebeuf, likewise carried on what was, after all, rather an 
heroic propaganda of Romanism than a preaching of Chris- 
tianity. 

With the stirrings in the nonconformist churches of Eng- 
land in the last years of the eighteenth century a new epoch 
opened. Since the days of Carey, of Martyn, of Judson, of 
Giitzlaff, of Heber, the missionary movement has swept on, 
decade by decade, gaining in scope and tidal propulsion, until 
it has, in our day, reached the most remote parts of the earth. 
After eighteen centuries of confined and limited existence, 
Christianity is becoming cosmopolitan. It is destroying and 
superseding all other forms of religious belief. It is the last 
type of faith which is to appear upon this earth. We have 
indeed reached a stupendous crisis in the world's religious life, 
the issue of which must be either the glorification of Chris- 
tianity or the final death of religion. Successors there can 
be none. This gives to our time a religious significance far 
exceeding that of either apostolic or Reformation era. 

* " Another hundred years and all will be over. The gospel is despised. 
Asia and Africa have no gospel. In Europe, Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, 
Hungarians, French, English, and Poles have none, either. The small 
electorate of Saxony will not hinder the end." (Quoted in Froude's 
"Luther," p. 54.) 



" CHRIST FOR THE WORLD" 225 

The world-wide spread of Christianity implies, of course, 
the enunciation and popularization of an unapproached and 
unassailable moral ideal and system. It means, further, the 
unification of the race through the agency of a common faith 
and a common hope. It means the establishment of one 
moral type among Anglo-Saxons, Sikhs, Slavs, Hunanese, and 
Basutos. The establishment of such a type will constitute a 
final argument for the truth of Christianity beside which the 
apologia of book-writers and creed-makers, as well as the 
efforts of those who seek to commend Christianity by paring 
away its supernaturalism and by assimilating it to ''progres- 
sive " opinion, will seem the veriest trifling. 

The modern missionary movement is, then, an undertaking 
admirable and important beyond all, even in our age of mul- 
titudinous activities. It is without question unprecedented 
as an example of elaborate, persevering, and extensive volun- 
tary effort. It offers, too, illustrations of faith and of obedience 
equal to any. What a suicidal plunge is that into the vast 
yellow ocean of eastern Asia! What an apparently impos- 
sible undertaking this of evangelizing four hundred millions 
of the most materialized people on earth! What misgivings 
must the brave, determined march into the night and gloom 
of the Dark Continent not awake! And to all the seemingly 
insurmountable difficulties abroad are added the continuous, 
persistent ridicule and misrepresentation of a secularized 
Christendom. The wisdom of God is still the foolishness of 
men. Christianity in its phase of world-wide expansion is as 
completely misunderstood as it was in the days of its inception. 
Many have dwelt upon the blindness of the world at large to 
the extent and importance of religious phenomena in the first 
centuries of this era. One of the most brilliant of living his- 
torians has said : 

" That the greatest religious change in the history of man- 
kind should have taken place under the eyes of a brilliant 



226 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

galaxy of philosophers and historians who were profoundly 
conscious of the decomposition around them ; that all these 
writers should have utterly failed to predict the issue of the 
movement they were observing ; and that during the space of 
three centuries they should have treated as simply contempti- 
ble an agency which all men must now admit to have been, 
for good or evil, the most powerful moral lever that has ever 
been applied to the affairs of men, are facts well worthy of 
meditation in every period of religious transition." * 

And yet they are facts which have a very close counterpart 
to-day. The contempt with which Tacitus spoke of " auctor 
nominis ejus," in the famous passage in the "Annals," is 
brother to the scorn which breathes through every utterance 
of the London "Times" and of the New York "Post" when 
missions are under consideration, and is not unsuggestive of 
the spirit which many Christians, as, for example, Charles 
Kingsley in certain scurrilous pages of " Alton Locke," have at 
times indulged. If this is true of Kingsley, what shall we say 
of the vilification which club-men, Gymkhana idlers, globe- 
trotters, and correspondents turn ceaselessly upon the represen- 
tatives of Jesus among the heathen? The carnal mind is in- 
deed enmity against God. Nay, more, it is stupidly bat-like 
in its vision of spiritual things and in its interpretation of his- 
tory. While minimizing or ignoring the patent results of 
missionary labor in India, in Uganda, in Japan, in Polynesia, 
and elsewhere— the schools, the hospitals, the opium refuges, 
the leper asylums, the zenana enterprises, the rescue work, the 
prison-gate efforts, the great native Christian conferences, the 
innumerable self-supporting native Christian churches— it re- 
members to forget the almost geologic deliberateness with 
which fundamental religious changes occur. It forgets the 
dim eons which have shaped and moulded and bound the fol- 
lowers of Vishnu and Siva ; it forgets, too, the nine centuries 

* W. E. H. Lecky, "European Morals," vol. i., p. 359. 



" CHRIST FOR THE WORLD" 227 

which it took to subdue Japan to Buddhism, and demands 
from the hands of a few awakened Christians cataclysmal 
results in mere decades. 

Yet, if neither the sublimity of project involved in the move- 
ment for a universal Christendom nor a knowledge of ac- 
complished result nor a sense of historic proportion were pres- 
ent, one would think that the remarkable concurrence of 
events which marks the present era would provoke attention 
and lead to a conviction of the import of the situation. For 
not only has the return to Bible study, so characteristic of our 
time, led to an emphatic reassertion of Christ's missionary in- 
junctions, not only has the reawakened life of the churches 
prepared the way for missionary enterprise, and not only has 
the increment of wealth for the prosecution of such work fallen 
to Protestant hands ; our century has also witnessed those 
great political changes which were the condition precedent to 
a world evangelization. It has seen an enlargement of the 
moenia mundi by the exploration of all remote and hitherto 
unknown parts of the earth. It has seen those regions brought 
to our doors by the extensive use of steam as a mode of motion. 
It has seen the opening to commerce and to missionary oper- 
ations of countries isolated, dormant, and closed against for- 
eigners. It has witnessed the uninterrupted passage of control 
over dark-skinned races from the hands of the Latin nations 
and from the influence of intolerant clericalism. It has wit- 
nessed the decay of papalism and of persecution in Catholic 
countries. It has witnessed the founding and growth to titanic 
power of new Protestant states in America and Australasia. 
It has, beyond all, witnessed the advance, decade by decade, 
of the British raj throughout the earth— the growth of a new 
Roma imperialis with proconsuls and pretors able to protect 
the representatives of Protestant Christendom in their work. 
The great God who hangs out nightly the stars in heaven does 
so not merely because they serve as lamps for us. Neither is 



228 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

he shaping contemporary history solely with reference to 
British pride and ''British interests. " The " weary Titan, 
with deaf ears and labor-dimmed eyes," as Matthew Arnold 
called this great cosmopolitan power, 

" Bearing on shoulders immense, 
Atlantean, the load 
Of the too vast orb of his fate," 

is, all unknown to himself, the serf of God preparing for and 
protecting his sons in their work. 

Those, therefore, who see in these almost cosmic movements 
no unity of divine purpose, but merely a multiplication of the 
complications of international politics, have indeed seen a 
great light, but have not heard the voice. To Lucian Jesus 
was but a "crucified sophist," and his followers outcast fa- 
natics. To the world at large modern missions are estimated 
in much the same fashion. It is not to be expected that 
those who are so oblivious to this convergence of the currents 
of history should regard with either interest or patience the testi- 
mony of Scripture as to the importance of evangelistic de- 
velopments. That these constitute, according to Jesus' own 
words,* the condition of his return to earth in power, is some- 
thing of which, doubtless, they do not know, or know only to 
mock. If this is really so, the final estimate of those engaged 
in this witnessing will be very different from that now cur- 
rent. 

It is from this point of view that the task of writing Dr. 
Gordon's life has been undertaken. Were it not for the fact 
that he was one of the very foremost figures of his day in 
America in the agitation for a world-wide propaganda of 
Christianity, his career would not, perhaps, be of such distinc- 

* " And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world 
for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come." 
(Matt. xxiv. 14.) 






" CHRIST FOR THE WORLD" 229 

tion as to require particular record. He would be remembered 
as a useful pastor, a gifted preacher, a friend of the poor, and 
a man of exalted saintliness. His labors, however, in behalf 
of missions were, during the last decade of his life, incessant ; 
they constituted his absorbing interest, his inspiring enthusiasm. 
In journeyings often, in labors of missionary tours, in labors 
of conventions, in labors of committees, as coeditor of the 
leading American missionary review, as author of missionary 
literature, as pastor of a church unsurpassed in missionary 
efforts, as the executive head of the denominational missionary 
organization, as founder of a training-school for missionaries, 
he toiled to the full measure of his strength. Even after his 
death— suggestive, indeed, of faithfulness to the end!— there 

i was found in his ulster pocket an appeal in behalf of the little 
blind girls of Canton who live in the slavery of enforced 
immorality ! 

The year 1888 was marked by greater activity in this line 
than any previous. The London conference gave a new 
impulse, the campaign in Scotland new opportunities, and his 
election to the position of chairman of the Executive Commit- 
[ tee of the American Baptist Missionary Union new responsi- 
bilities. In the seven years of life which remained to him his 
best work for this cause was accomplished. 

The great Centenary Conference on Foreign Missions, con- 
vened in London, June, 1888, holds, even in these days of 
memorable conventions, a place of preeminent interest. It 

I was a gathering in the best sense ecumenical. Every Protes- 
tant missionary society in the world gave to it its adherence. 

I Every evangelical church having any agency for the extension 

Nof the Redeemer's kingdom was represented. Distinguished 
missionaries from abroad — Hudson Taylor, Bishop Crowther, 
John Wilkinson, Dr. Post, Murray Mitchell— gave to the 
gatherings the results of years of observation and experience. 
There were laymen, too, friends of missions, whose names 



230 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

command attention in the East as well as in the West— Sir 
William Muir, Sir Monier Williams, Sir Richard Temple, Sir 
W. W. Hunter, General Phayre, Sir Robert Cust, and Lord 
Northbrooke, the ex-viceroy of India. There were promoters 
of missions present like Messrs. Stock, Broomhall, and Guin- 
ness. The Vatican Council of '70 was the last and complete 
expression of Romanism. The Chicago Parliament of Reli- 
gions of '93 — that strange gathering of religious and irreligious 
miscellanea— embodied, directly or by implication, the es- 
sentials of " liberalism." The London International Mission- 
ary Conference of '88 exhibited to the world Christianity in 
its purest, best, and most useful phase. The spirit of the 
gathering was beyond criticism. From beginning to end 
there was no friction, notwithstanding the variety of denomi- 
national interests represented. The divisions of Protestantism, 
so much dwelt upon, seemed to have disappeared. Dr. Gor- 
don, who, though speaking only occasionally, was listened to with 
marked interest, said very pertinently, after contrasting this 
spirit of comity with the spurious " unity " so often demanded : 

" We have a Bible that is one, but that has been translated 
into at least three hundred languages. Now remember that 
the old church, that shed rivers of blood to prevent one church 
of Christ Jesus being translated into various sects, also shed 
rivers of blood to prevent the Word of God being translated 
into various languages. That church is just as opposed to a 
polyform Christianity as it is to a polyglot Bible. But we 
have both. 

"Are we not, then, to look for a reunion of the church? 
I cannot dwell on this point long, but will simply say, Yes; 
I 'beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and oar gathering together unto him. 1 That will be a 
reunion of Christendom, a reunion in which there will be 
included nothing 'that defileth, or worketh abomination, or 
maketh a lie.' " 



" CHRIST FOR THE WORLD" 231 

The problems discussed were of great variety and delicacy. 
As an executive in the management of extended missionary 
interests, Dr. Gordon listened with absorbed attention; the 
reports from the fields filled him with delighted enthusiasm. 
He could think only of the great review which closed our 
Civil War as veteran after veteran came to the front and re- 
lated his struggles and victories in Africa, in Asia, or in the 
islands of the Pacific. He was introduced to a Moravian 
brother, "a. man of humble bearing and broken English." 
The remembrances of Herrnhut welled up into his eyes and 
rolled out on his cheeks as he grasped his hand. In the 
auxiliary meetings following the conference — at Mr. Guin- 
ness's East London Institute, at Association Hall, and at Mild- 
may — he was listened to by great throngs. He preached, 
too, in the streets and parks of London without interference. 
At the Mildmay Conference he enjoyed the fellowship of the 
choicest spirits of British Christianity. With brimming eyes 
did he listen to the wonderful expositions of Hebrews by 
Adolph Saphir. With brimming eyes was his own beautiful 
address on " Union with Christ " received. 

The conferences being over, he went to Paris to look into 
the work of the McAll Mission. His addresses at the various 
halls had, according to the testimony of an eye-witness, a 
powerfully moving effect on the audiences of French men and 
women. W T hile speaking in Paris, an urgent message reached 
him from representatives of the Scotch churches, who had 
heard him in London, begging him to address a series of 
meetings which had been arranged in Edinburgh for July 14- 
17th. These dates were chosen in order to reach the univer- 
sity students before their dispersion for the vacation. At the 
cost of complete alteration of plan, he left for Scotland with 
Dr. Pierson. The meetings in Edinburgh were of great power. 
The large Synod Hall was filled to its utmost capacity. As 
the meetings progressed it was clear that the tide was rising. 



232 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Before the conference was over an appeal was drawn up im- 
portuning Dr. Gordon and Dr. Pierson to make a tour of the 
principal cities and towns of Scotland in behalf of the mission- 
ary interests of Scotch churches. This was adopted with fer- 
vor, two thousand people rising en masse to express their ap- 
probation as soon as the letter had been read. Then followed 
a laborious but fruitful missionary campaign. Largely at- 
tended meetings were held in Edinburgh, Oban, Nairn, Elgin, 
Inverness, Aberdeen, Strathpeffer, Dundee, and elsewhere. 
Everywhere the American ministers were received with en- 
thusiasm; everywhere their w r ords made a deep impression. 
Gordon's allusion to his Scotch name and ancestry excited 
warm response. " We are getting much enjoyment, too, along 
with this unexpected service into which we have been drawn 
by the importunity of our Scotch friends," he wrote. On a 
lovely day he visited Iona, the center from which wide-reach- 
ing missionary impulses radiated in medieval times. The day 
at this shrine he counted one of the most inspiring of his life, 
and ever after St. Columba shared with Brainerd and Carey 
in his heart's affection. 

On his return to America he was elected to the honorable 
and onerous position of chairman of the Executive Commit- 
tee of the American Baptist Missionary Union. He had al- 
ready served as a member of this committee for more than 
seventeen years. In his new capacity he was to guide its 
deliberations for six years more. A minute passed by his as- 
sociates at his death, after adverting upon " the advantages 
which the prestige of his honored and growing name brought 
to the Union," remarked : 

" But the value of his incumbency was enhanced by the 
unvarying courtesy of his demeanor, the combined dignity 
and affability of his bearing toward his associates, the clear 
knowledge and sound judgment which he brought to the 
elucidation of the questions involved in our work— questions 



" CHRIST FOR THE WORLD 1 ' 233 

always grave and often intricate and perplexing— the patience, 
the faith, the mingled moderation and energy, and the untiring 
industry of his service. ,, 

This work was the most taxing in which he engaged; 
nevertheless none was nearer his heart. For he was no per- 
functory official who dismissed from his thought the whole 
business of the committee as soon as the meetings adjourned. 
No one on the foreign field but could at any time appeal to 
him for the most intelligent sympathy in his labors. "The 
best prayer-book is a map of the world/' he said once. The 
denominational mission stations in Burmah, in Africa, in China, 
were collects in this prayer-book to which he often turned. 
" Instead of praying for the Lord's blessing upon our mission 
fields and upon our missionary brethren in general, let us 
get a list of their names and take some one of them before 
the throne of God each day. Let us make ourselves so far 
acquainted with their circumstances of trial or success that 
we shall have definite petitions or thanksgivings to make for 
them. Let the missionaries be reminded to send home specific 
requests for prayer, and let them be taken up for definite re- 
membrance at our monthly meetings. For ourselves, we have 
found great blessing and profit in going through the mission- 
ary list day after day. The heartfelt solicitude of the apostle 
to the Gentiles nowhere comes out more manifestly than in 
the frequent recurrence of that saying, 'Without ceasing I 
make mention of you always in my prayers.' " 

He was, furthermore, constantly writing letters of encourage- 
ment to lonely and isolated missionaries. One of these re- 
marks, " In intellectual appreciation and heart experience of 
the profoundest truths of the gospel, I owe to A. J. Gordon 
a debt next to that I owe the apostles. I deem him the be- 
loved apostle, the John of our generation." He then goes 
on to say, " His fatherly interest touched my life in many 
ways and when I most needed a touch divine. When alone 



234 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

with my wife in the mountains of Assam, I received from 
him ' In Christ ' and ' The Twofold Life/ with the autograph 
and the love of the author on the fly-leaf of each. Words 
can never tell what these two books were to us in that moun- 
tain fastness." Another writes, "1 feel the Congo Mission 
has met a great loss in his death. Oh, that some one might 
be raised up to enter into the sympathies and hold the conn 
dence of the missionaries as he did! I remember writing, at 
the suggestion of Brother Hoste, for a chapel at Lukunga, 
though we had little faith in asking. The promise of help 
which the following letter gives was redeemed to the full: 

" ' My dear Brother: Your letter is just received, and I 
am rejoiced to hear that you are well and hopeful. Dear, 
devoted Brother Hoste, of whom all speak with such admira- 
tion and affection, certainly ought to have a chapel. I will 
talk it up and see what can be done. Our prayers are much 
toward you and your great, dark field, where the open sore 
of the world is awaiting the healing of the great Physician. 
Your position is an enviable one considering the rewards 
which belong to it from the Master, but I do not forget also 
the hardsh ps and trials which belong to it. These may the 
Lord give you grace to bear. . . .' " 

At another time an iron chapel was needed at Banza Man- 
teke. He took the matter up, raised the money in his own 
church, and cabled the order for its immediate construction. 
When the Congo Mission was first assumed by his society, 
complications arose which interrupted the channels of supply 
to those in Africa. In this crisis he himself guaranteed a 
shipment of provisions on order at Bywaters in London. No 
wonder that, as another wrote from another quarter of the 
world, " we looked to him as to an elder brother, one to whom 
we could go for advice in critical junctures, upon whose con- 
fidence and prayer we could rely. . . . For a whole night I 
have been weeping his departure." 



CHAPTER XVIII 

ON THE CONDUCT OF MISSIONS 

Missionary administration — On " witnessing" as the church's chief func- 
tion — Education vs. Evangelization — Government grants to mission 
schools — Philadelphia address on "Decentralization" 

WITHOUT doubt Dr. Gordon's conviction of the immi- 
nence of Christ's return affected his advice on matters 
of administration. " He believed," wrote one of his associ- 
ates on the board, " that some of the types of mission policy 
prevailing were formed without due regard to what he thought 
a preliminary stage of missionary operation, and that this view 
of the present dispensation as final practically nullified any 
expectation of the Lord's return. With many people the 
advent of civilization and a broad view of mission work are 
practically identical. Not so with Dr. Gordon. He believed 
that the gospel was to be preached in a profound sense 'as 
a witness,' as a provisional stage of effort, and that to turn 
aside to various forms of higher education and to other semi- 
secular methods of work was to minimize the chief function 
of the church of Christ in this age. He entertained, however, 
no superficial or shallow view of what that witness included. 
He believed that the word 'witness,' as used in the New 
Testament, is descriptive of the profoundest form of human 
effort possible to the Christian— effort endowed with the very 
power and energy and wisdom of the Holy Ghost. His con- 
ception of the witness embraced the idea of witnessing churches 
and institutions. He believed that many forms of quasi-mis- 
sionary enterprise were representative of a partial departure 



236 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

from apostolic standards and New Testament conceptions of 
evangelizing the world."* He was not, however, unmindful 
of the representative character of his office or of the constitu- 
ency behind him which dissented from this view. He sought 
accordingly to emphasize those phases of mission work which 
are necessarily acceptable to all. Evangelism he considered 
beyond all the proper and pressing work of the Union. Pri- 
mary education, too, he felt to be a legitimate function, in that 
Protestantism and illiteracy cannot coexist. But the higher 
education ought, he contended, to be a development of the 
life of the native church. Its superimposition by the home 
board he considered untimely in view of the black masses of 
the unevangelized. With the policy of educating heathen 
from the contributions of American Christians he would have 
nothing to do. He questioned whether, in any large degree, 
conversions followed as a result of the extensive educational 
propaganda which is carried on in India and elsewhere. And, 
apart from considerations of expediency, he denied to it the 
spiritual and essentially Christian note which should charac- 
terize missionary operations. He compared the missionary 
professor who devotes his days to teaching Brahman lads 
English literature and algebra and physics, that in a Christian 
atmosphere they may be attracted to Christian truth, to the 
sacramentarian who hales the multitude into " the church " 
that they may by its intermediary influence be saved. 

" Has this dispensation of teaching," he asks, " after all, 
proved really helpful in preparing the heathen mind to receive 
the Word of life? No more, probably, than a gymnasium in 

* " The work distinctly appointed for this present time is the gathering 
of the ecclesia, the called out. Not that we would question for a moment 
the ultimate conversion of the world. When ' that which is in part shall 
be done away,' and when ' that which is perfect is come/ then indeed 
shall our Lord Jesus have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river 
unto the ends of the earth." (Article " Education and Missions," A. J. 
Gordon, " Missionary Review," December, 1893.) 



ON THE CONDUCT OF MISSIONS 237 

the basement of an American church, with its curriculum of 
dumb-bells and vaulting-bars, has conduced to a change of 
heart in the young men who have entered therein. The tend- 
ency is inevitable for these preparatives to become substitutes. 
Education, by all means! But in the school of grace the law 
seems to be, not 'know in order that you may believe,' but 
'believe in order that you may know.' Culture, when set 
forward as a forerunner of Christ, has constantly failed to 
become such, because it lacks the humility to say, ' He it is 
who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe- 
latchet I am not worthy to unloose.' It being true, accord- 
ing to our Lord's own words, that the Father hath ' hid these 
things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto 
babes,' it cannot be the missionary's business to make men 
wise and prudent in order that they may receive the gospel, 
but rather to tell the wise and prudent that, except they re- 
pent and become as little children, they shall in no wise enter 
into the kingdom of heaven." 

To the custom of receiving government grants for mission 
schools he was likewise heartily opposed. He felt that there 
was an insidious danger in this bond between church and state. 
He clearly saw that there can hardly be a conscience other 
than the nonconformist conscience, since state religion tends, 
by a natural gravitation, to become the organ of expression 
for officialism, and therefore for the majority, for the control- 
ling element in the state, and for the almost invariable oppo- 
nents of reform opinion. He had seen how, on the mission 
field, the government grant had often dulled the moral sense 
of missionaries, making them wabble and trim and flutter like 
a pigeon whose brain has been partly removed.* 

* As, for example, in the case of the Anglican bishop and clergy of Cal- 
cutta, who testified recently in favor of the continuance of the state opium 
trade, and certain missionaries in the last Decennial Conference at Bom- 
bay, who deprecated agitation against licensed vice in the Anglo-Indian 
army. 



238 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

" The stipend rarely fails/' he wrote, " to assert its authority 
over the stipendiary; subsidies are almost certain, sooner or 
later, to subsidize. Therefore let missions be on their guard 
against the encumbrance of state aid. . . . To give secular 
teaching in exchange for government grants may be an honest 
transaction, but is the missionary of the cross commissioned 
for such a business? As a matter of fact, the missionary so- 
cieties of free churches and established churches alike have 
fallen into the habit of receiving government grants in aid on 
the foreign field. The system of secular education among our 
missions is largely related to this usage. The wrong principle 
— alliance of missions with the state — has led to what many 
regard as a wrong result. It was through this principle, 
gradually and almost imperceptibly adopted, that the early 
church, from being ' more than conqueror,' became more than 
conquered, since, instead of Christianizing paganism, her 
Christianity was paganized. The law of the kingdom of 
heaven is not the law of the kingdom of earth. The world's 
motto is, ' In union there is strength;' the church's motto is, 
1 In separation there is strength.' " 

For many years Dr. Gordon represented the board at the May 
meetings of the denomination, voicing as spokesman its appeals 
for greater activity, and presenting the results of the year's work 
to its constituency. His addresses constituted a striking feature 
of the yearly gatherings. " Always unique in character, they 
were given without apparent self-consciousness, without the 
least effort to make a great impression. They were the over- 
flow of his mind and heart respecting the biblical conception 
of missions and the obligations of the servants of Christ to 
pour out their lives in the very spirit of their Lord himself in 
behalf of the most abandoned and abject races of the earth. 
There was a quiet, awe-inspiring majesty about them that gave 
them a character entirely their own. Their moral and spirit- 
ual force was always invincible. As a rule, Dr. Gordon, in 






ON THE CONDUCT OF MISSIONS 239 

his public addresses, rarely adverted to the details of policy 
or to his own special views. His appeal on these occasions 
was to those instincts and convictions which are common to 
all Christian minds. He held his audience to the profoundest 
yet most simple and primary obligations." * 

The address at Philadelphia in 1893 was one of exceptional 
power. One hundred years of mission work had been finished. 
The future, with all its hopes, its anxieties, its responsibilities, 
was opening a new volume for the record of new enterprises, 
of new dangers, of new victories. The moment was of a 
solemnity and import which Gordon clearly realized. For 
nearly two hours he held an audience of four thousand people 
in the Academy of Music, unfolding to them the conclusions 
of twenty years' experience, pointing out the lines which the 
program of the new years must follow, dwelling on the por- 
tentous needs of the world, and stimulating his hearers to 
better things by the recital of the triumphs of self-sacrifice and 
of missionary heroism. " I wanted to say more in regard to 
the work of the Moravian missionaries," he said afterward, 
with a perceptible tremor in his voice, "but I could not trust 
myself." For on that day his heart was full! 

A part only of that address can we quote here, the part 
which deals with the policy of decentralization in missionary 
administration : 

" I am to speak to-night of the missionary outlook. Need 
I say how much depends upon an intelligent apprehension of 
our past, in order to an intelligent forecast of our future? 
The century of missions is closing; and what inspirations, 
what resources, what preparations, what opportunities, has 
this century brought to us! At the beginning of the century 
there were only two or three missionary societies in all Prot- 
estant Christendom; now there are upward of one hundred 
such societies, whose representatives are preaching the gospel 

* Dr. H. C. Mabie, 



240 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

to every nation under heaven. Then less than fifty versions 
of the Scriptures comprised the entire work of Bible transla- 
tion since the days of the apostles ; now the Word of God has 
been translated into more than- two hundred and eighty lan- 
guages, and the whole Bible made accessible to nine tenths 
of the human race. In the beginning of the century £13 2s. 
6d. was cast into the treasury, at the house of Widow Wallace 
at Kettering, for inaugurating the enterprise of modern mis- 
sions ; at the close of the century the societies which have 
sprung from that humble beginning are contributing eleven 
million dollars annually for evangelizing the heathen. A 
hundred years ago women's missionary societies were un- 
known ; to-day there are nearly thirty such societies in Amer- 
ica alone, with twenty-five thousand auxiliaries, contributing 
a million and three fourths dollars annually for spreading the 
gospel. At the beginning of the century, though the doors 
of several of the heathen nations stood ajar, hardly one had 
been securely opened ; now every nation under heaven is to 
such degree accessible that missionaries of the cross have 
entered in. Well may we write the word ' opportunity ' over 
the closing decade of this nineteenth century ; and well may 
we be admonished that opportunity is but another name for 
importunity, as though God were beseeching us by every open 
door to open our hearts and to open our hands and to open 
our purses, that we may worthily meet the crisis of missions 
which is upon us. 

" Now, measuring our fidelity on the scale of our opportu- 
nity, what estimate do we reach? The field is the world, and 
the whole world is accessible ; and in all the world we have 
at the present time about seven thousand missionaries. But 
the same constituency which has seven thousand missionaries 
in the foreign field has a hundred and twenty-seven thousand 
ordained ministers laboring at home. In parishes of Great 



ON THE CONDUCT OF MISSIONS 241 

Britain and America there are repeated instances of two or 
three ordained preachers to the thousand and two thousand 
souls ; while it is estimated that every ordained foreign mis- 
sionary has a parish of three hundred thousand souls. Does 
this look as though the Shepherd and Bishop of souls were 
bearing rule in the diocese of the world, and receiving loyal 
obedience from those who are under him ? 

"Again, the wealth of Protestant Christians has increased 
so enormously during the century that the evangelical Chris- 
tians of the United States are credited with possessing thirtee7i 
billions of dollars. But do they possess this wealth, or are 
ihey possessed by it ? is the question which must be raised 
when I tell you that these same Christians contribute annually 
only twenty-five cents per capita for foreign missions, and 
that this contribution is computed to be but one thirty-second 
part of one per cent, of their w r ealth. 

u In spite of the meagerness of our contributions of men 
and money, missionaries have w r on marvelous triumphs. The 
converts from heathenism and their families are estimated at 
three millions— a result for which we should thank God and 
take courage. But, according to the statistics of Mr. John- 
stone, in his ' Century of Missions,' the gain in heathen and 
Mohammedan population has been seventy times greater than 
this. Considering, then, that of earth's one thousand four 
hundred millions of population a thousand millions are yet 
destitute of any saving knowledge of Christ; and considering, 
moreover, that every success already won constitutes a new 
call for laborers and contributions and evangelical zeal, is it 
not clear that the demand upon us in the closing decade of 
this century is greater than ever before? And what shall be 
our answer to this demand? In replying to this question, I 
may disarm prejudice by saying that I repeat what many of 
our wisest men thought at the beginning of the century, and 



242 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

what more think at the close, when I give this threefold 
challenge: churches to the front, reserves to the front, pas- 
tors to the front! 

" First, in regard to the duty of our churches. In a very able 
article in a recent number of the ' British and Foreign Evan- 
gelical Review,' I find this somewhat startling statement : 
' The churches of Great Britain have never as yet made for- 
eign missions a part of their work. The great missionary 
societies in England are all outside the churches, which, as 
churches, have nothing to do with their management or main- 
tenance. It is true the money comes from members of the 
churches, and church-members are the managers of the socie- 
ties ; but all that the churches do is to manifest a benevolent 
neutrality or to bestow a benevolent patronage. Missions to 
the heathen are not made the work of the churches/ This 
statement is just as applicable to America as to Great Britain. 
As churches we are not directly participating in the great 
work of foreign missions, though we are doing so by represen- 
tation and by delegation. And yet I sincerely believe that 
our divinely given polity commits us to such participation. 
1 For ye, brethren, became followers [imitators] of the churches 
of God which in Judea are in Christ Jesus/ says the apostle. 
I have no doubt that the church at Antioch is our inspired 
model as a missionary church as truly as a gospel church. 
That church, under the immediate guidance of the Holy 
Spirit, set apart and sent forth its own members as mission- 
aries of the cross. And I have the strongest conviction that, 
if every church would do the same to-day, we could multiply 
our missionary activity a thousandfold. 

" ' But single churches would be unable to undertake such 
a work/ it may be said. ' How many do you count me for? ' 
asked the Macedonian general, as his soldiers expressed their 
fear of going into battle against great odds. ' How many 
do you count me for? ' asks the Holy Ghost, who still abides 



ON THE CONDUCT OF MISSIONS 243 

in the church with his undivided presence and his undiminished 
power. If it were not for this last consideration I would not 
broach this subject at this time. Christ, in the person of the 
Holy Spirit, dwells in every church in the fullness of his pres- 
ence. ' Where two or three are gathered in my name, there 
am I in the midst of them/ is the Magna Charta of the local 
church. Christ is not divided ; he has not distributed himself 
among his churches, giving a part of himself to each, so that 
only by a union of all the churches can we secure the presence 
of the whole Christ. 

" Herein is the immense difference between spiritual force 
and physical force. You can obtain a hundred horse-power 
by harnessing a hundred horses into one team ; but you can- 
not secure a hundred church-power by uniting a hundred 
churches into one society ; and for this reason : by separate 
church action that sense of weakness and dependence is pro- 
moted by which Christians are driven to take hold on God ; 
by united church action that sense of denominational strength 
is nourished by which Christians are led to take hold of one 
another. My brethren, need I tell you that responsibility is 
the mother of activity — that necessity is the spring of prevail- 
ing prayer? Therefore I affirm that the greatest problem 
which we have to solve is that of putting the weight of spirit- 
ual obligation, which belongs to every church and to every 
Christian, upon every church and upon every Christian. And 
I believe that our divinely appointed church polity was or- 
dained for this very purpose, and if rightly carried out can 
effect it as no presbyterian or episcopal government can do. 
By a wonderful arrangement of natural law the atmosphere 
presses with a weight of fifteen pounds to the square inch on 
every human body. Unite a thousand people in one body 
and you do not relieve the pressure by a single ounce from 
any single individual. Would that the same law held good in 
regard to the weight of moral and spiritual responsibility! 



244 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

But, as a matter of fact, organization and association tend to 
take off the pressure from the local churches and from the 
individual Christians, and our vast machinery of secretarial 
agencies has been invented in order to restore this pressure as 
best we can. ^/ 

" President Wayland, speaking on this subject more than 
forty years ago, predicted, with the wisest missionary states- 
manship, that the tendency among us would be more and 
more for churches to turn over their missionary obligation to 
societies, for societies to turn it over to boards, for boards to 
delegate it to executive committees, and executive committees 
to secretaries ; so that, in the last result, the chief responsibility 
for the great work would come upon the shoulders of a dozen 
men. As one who has been honored for twenty years to stand 
under this burden at the center, I can say that I do not desire 
to see an ounce of it lifted ; but it would be a new era for 
missions if the same pressure could rest upon every local 
church which rests upon the favored twelve men at the center. 
Nor do I for a moment plead that our noble Missionary 
Union should be set aside or its present functions curtailed. 
Without such organizations the great missionary movement 
could not, humanly speaking, have been inaugurated. As in 
the building of railroads there must be a combination of labor 
and capital, so here the organized union and cooperation of 
all our churches was needful. But, the railroad being com- 
pleted, it is adapted for private traffic as well as for public 
transport. Such was evidently the thought of the fathers and 
founders of the Missionary Union, as shown in the sixteenth 
article of our constitution, which requires the Executive Com- 
mittee to ' afford such aid and encouragement as may be suita- 
ble to such individuals, churches, or local associations of Bap- 
tist churches as may prefer to support missionaries of their 
own appointment/ 

" If we could only come to this— that each church would 



ON THE CONDUCT OF MISSIONS 245 

take up missionary work directly, making the Union its com- 
mission house for the transaction of its business, its banking 
house for transmitting funds, and its Bible and publishing 
house for supplying literature— who doubts that we might do 
vastly more than we are now doing? 

" Do you accuse me of being an idealist, going back to a 
remote Antioch for an example instead of considering the 
changed circumstances and conditions in which we are living? 
I reply that it is the actual which has awakened my interest in 
this question rather than the ideal— the exhibition of what has 
really been accomplished where churches have undertaken 
direct missionary work. 

" By universal consent, Moravian missions hold a unique 
place among the evangelizing agencies of the world. When 
I remind you that the Moravian Brethren send one out of 
every sixty of their members to the foreign field, that they are 
credited with raising ten dollars per member annually for for- 
eign missions, and that their success has been such that they 
have three times as many communicants on the foreign field 
as in the home churches, you will admit that they deserve the 
peerless honor which has been accorded to them by the his- 
torians of missions. What is the secret of this astonishing 
preeminence among all the missionary enterprises of Chris- 
tendom? I believe that this secret is told in a single sentence, 
which I take from their own official declaration. That decla- 
ration says, ' There is never a church among the Brethren with- 
out a mission to the heathen; and there is never a mission of the 
Brethren which is not the direct affair of the church? In other 
words, while all other Protestant bodies carry on missions 
through societies, the Moravian Church is its own and only 
missionary society. Dr. Warneck, of Germany, a very high 
authority on the subject of foreign missions, believes that this 
fact furnishes the real secret of the unique position and the 
unparalleled success of Moravian missions. Is not here a 



246 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

question, then, deserving the most serious and unprejudiced 
consideration? Our great societies were needed for pioneer- 
ing the modern missionary enterprise, and they would still be 
needed if every local church were to take up missions for itself 
— needed for conducting and perpetuating the work. For, 
though the church, as the body of Christ, is complete in itself 
and can develop no new organs, it can create for itself the 
tools and implements of its spiritual husbandry. Such exactly 
are missionary boards. But w r e need constantly to be re- 
minded that our strength is not in tools, but in life; not in 
outward organization, but in the indwelling Spirit of God. 

" With our exaggerated confidence in the power of associa- 
tion, I imagine some one asking impatiently, ' Do you mean 
to imply that one church acting alone can do one one-hundredth 
part of what a hundred can do acting through an organized 
society?' Giving the answer of history, I might truly say that 
a single church, acting in union with the Holy Spirit and in 
supreme dependence on his power, can do as much as a hun- 
dred churches depending on the power of organization. 

" I make good this affirmation. Pastor Harms, of Ger- 
many, because he could get no sympathy from men in his 
missionary idea, was constrained to turn his own peasant 
church of Hermannsburg into a missionary society. He was 
appalled at the greatness of the undertaking ; and he tells us 
in graphic language how, in the crisis of his life, he prayed 
far into the night that God would anoint him for the mighty 
enterprise. At midnight he rose from his knees and said, 
' Forward, now, in God's name,' and from that moment he 
never faltered. And what was the result? His church of 
poor artisans and farmers took up the work in prayerful co- 
operation with their pastor ; and at the end of forty years they 
had put into the foreign field more than three hundred and 
fifty missionaries, supporting them in their work, and building 
a ship for transporting them to and from the field ; and they 



ON THE CONDUCT OF MISSIONS 247 

had nearly fourteen thousand living communicants whom they 
had won from heathenism. Is there one of our great mission- 
ary societies, with a constituency of thousands of churches, 
which can surpass for its first forty years the record of this 
single missionary church? The experience of Pastor Gossner 
and his Bethlehem Church in Berlin is hardly less wonderful. 
He sent out and maintained one hundred and forty-one mis- 
sionaries — two hundred, including the wives of those married 
—who did a work among the heathen second to none. 

" It may be said that these are exceptional men. They 
were so only in this, that they believed implicitly in the im- 
manence of the Holy Spirit in the church, in the unlimited 
power which they may have who depend upon him and who 
throw themselves unreservedly upon him. I believe such ex- 
amples as these are given us as divine object-lessons for re- 
calling us to primitive missionary methods, reminding us how 
much greater is consecration than organization ; how much 
mightier the personal responsibility which compels us to take 
hold on God, than the association which leads us to take hold 
on one another. I repeat it, then, the greatest problem which 
confronts us for the opening century is that of distributing the 
missionary responsibility which has become congested in the 
official centers. As touching the duty of giving and of pray- 
ing and of going, this is the question of questions. 

" If an obligation of half a million annually resting on our 
executive board only registers twenty-five cents a year on the 
individual pocket-book, does it not prove the necessity for a 
transference of pressure ? Think how some insignificant church 
enterprise, like the purchase of a new organ or the hiring of 
an incomprehensible soprano, unlooses the purse-strings. Oh, 
if Christians would only lift for the needs of a perishing world 
as they lift to supply the luxuries of their own church worship, 
what should we not see accomplished ! 

"And praying, like giving, needs the pressure of direct ob- 



248 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

ligation to sustain it. If, somehow, the life of the missionary 
could be bound up with the life of the local church, so that 
his success should be their success or his failure their failure, 
what an impulse it would give to their intercessions! Prayer 
is the last thing which should be put into a joint-stock com- 
pany in which we invest general supplications for all men, and 
from which we take out only general dividends with the church 
universal. I believe that God designed to lay the burden of 
the whole world upon every church, that every church might 
thus find out that it has a whole Christ with whom to 
bear that burden. Then would it not only pray and give, 
but it would go and send of its own instead of depending 
on a central bureau to attend to all this. 

" This, then, is the problem to be solved. If my suggestion 
toward its solution seems visionary and impracticable, depend- 
ing for its demonstration upon examples borrowed from remote 
times and places, I strongly insist that it is most practicable. I 
think you must acknowledge the vast inequality of the pres- 
sure, and the possibility at least of correcting this inequality, 
when I tell you that I know of a single church — by no means 
wealthy, but which has begun the enterprise of supporting its 
own missionaries and otherwise coming under the most im- 
mediate responsibility for the foreign work — whose contribu- 
tions last year equaled the combined gifts of either one of 
three New England States with their hundreds of local 
churches. At all events, what I have suggested is a harm- 
less endeavor toward the solution of a difficult problem ; and 
I pray that if any church or pastor should be moved in loyal 
fellowship with our Missionary Union to take up this plan, he 
may not be frowned upon as an innovator. . . . 

" And, finally, how imperative is the summons for pastors 
at home to enter with whole-souled consecration into the 
work of foreign missions! Until the great body of ministers 
do this, making foreign missions their chief business, and in- 



ON THE CONDUCT OF MISSIONS 249 

vesting all their capital in the business— time and money and 
energy and influence — the mighty missionary impulse which 
is now called for will not be gained. I believe that we have 
now reached a crisis, and that, with worldliness and rational- 
ism coming in like a flood on the one hand, and missionary 
enthusiasm moving out like a flood on the other, we must in- 
evitably be carried in one of the two directions. I say world- 
liness and rationalism. These are but the two names of one 
and the same thing. Rationalism is worldliness on its God- 
ward side, as worldliness is rationalism on its earthward side. 
As invariably as pietism has been the mother of missions at 
every rebirth, so invariably has rationalism stood ready to 
destroy the young child as soon as it has been born. As cer- 
tainly as the great commission was sounded anew in the ears 
of our fathers a hundred years ago, so certainly is it sounding 
anew in our ears to-day. We may well tremble to think what 
had been the result had William Carey's brethren silenced his 
missionary appeal, as at first they tried to do. But, by the 
providence of God, they listened, consented, and cooperated, 
and the result is that the English-speaking race has become, 
the missionary army of the world. 

" But let us remember that there were Careys before Carey. 
More than a hundred years before his day, Baron von Weltz 
had sought to rouse the German Protestant church to its duty 
of renewed obedience to the great commission. In what 
pathetic, almost frantic appeals he voiced his conviction, 
surrendering his title and his wealth, and offering himself to 
go to any part of the world if only his brethren would take up 
the work of giving the gospel to the heathen! But his cry 
was silenced, Lutheran clergymen and university professors 
uniting to suppress him as a dreamer and a fanatic ; and so, 
with broken heart, he turned from his church and his country, 
saying in spirit, ' Behold, your house is left desolate,' and went 
forth to fill a solitary missionary grave in a foreign field. Is 



250 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDO 1ST 

it accidental that such an age of dreary rationalism should 
have followed this rejected opportunity in Germany? a ration- 
alism relieved, indeed, by the holy lives and teaching of a little 
company of Pietists, like Francke and Spener, who were hated 
and denounced as bitterly as Von Weltz had been. Is it an 
accident that Germany, instead of being the chief fountain of 
missionary influence, as it might have been had it not rejected 
its opportunity, has become in some sense a missionary field, 
the co-religionists of Carey now supporting missionaries and 
evangelists in the heart of the Lutheran Church in order to 
win back the people to an evangelical faith in Christ? Let 
us be afraid of lost missionary opportunities! Such a one 
may be just before us. The church which is not a mission- 
ary church will be a missing church during the next fifty years, 
its candle of consecration put out, if not its candlestick re- 
moved out of its place. As ministers and churches of Jesus 
Christ, our self-preservation is conditioned on our obedience 
to the great commission. Now it is preach or perish! evan- 
gelize or fossilize! be a saving church, with girded loins and 
burning lamp, carrying a lost world on the heart day and 
night ; or be a secularized church, lying on the heart of this 
present evil world, and allowing it to gird you and carry you 
whithersoever it will. Which shall it be? " 



CHAPTER XIX 



AS MAKING MANY RICH 



The faith element in missions — The Clarendon Street Church as a mis- 
sionary church— Its training in giving 

IT will be readily believed that the voice which rang out 
with these sentiments in the churches and in the great 
gatherings of the denomination did not fail to advocate in the 
meetings of the Executive Committee a policy of continuous 
advance. We have seen with what earnestness Dr. Gordon 
went over the country in behalf of the Congo Mission. Every 
other forward movement had likewise his unhesitating support. 
This was not bravado or an irresponsible recklessness, though 
it often seemed so to the timid. It was an enthusiasm of faith 
conscious of the opportunities which a humble cooperation 
with God in his work opens up. 

" Is Christ the chief treasurer who supplies the missionary 
funds? " he asked in an article on " The Faith Element in Mis- 
sions." " Practically there is a very wide difference of opin- 
ion upon this point. ' And Prudence sat over against the 
treasury, watching the expenditures, to see that Faith did not 
overdraw her account,' would fairly state the financial method 
of many missionary committees. 'Faith in the work of 
preaching the gospel, indeed, but in administering the mission- 
ary exchequer sound business principles, if you please.' So 
we have often heard it, and we do not dispute the wisdom of 
the saying. 

" But here we are conducting the King's business, let it be 

251 



252 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

remembered, and in its transactions are no overdrafts of faith 
ever allowable? May the promises of God never be taken 
as collateral in this business? Is the Lord's servant forbidden 
to hypothecate the bonds of the everlasting covenant as a 
security for a missionary contract when he has no funds in the 
bank? The enterprise of missions is peculiarly the Lord's 
work, and as such has guarantors and guaranties back of any 
that are human. 

" The paradox, ' Verum est quia impossibile,' which Tertul- 
lian uttered concerning doctrine, it is time for us boldly to 
apply to action, saying, ' It is practicable because it is impos- 
sible;' for, under the dispensation of the Spirit, our ability is 
no longe • the measure of our responsibility. 'The things 
which are impossible with men are possible with God,' and 
therefore possible for us who have been united to God through 
faith. Since the Holy Ghost has been given, it is not suffi- 
cient for the servant to say to his Master, ' I am doing as well 
as I can,' for now he is bound to do better than he can. 
Should a New York merchant summon his commercial agent 
in Boston to come to him as quickly as possible, would he be 
satisfied if that agent were to arrive at the end of a week, 
footsore and weary from walking the entire distance, with the 
excuse, ' I came as quickly as I could'? With swift steamer 
or lightning express at his disposal, would he not be bound to 
come more quickly than he could? And so, with the power 
of Christ as our resource, and his riches in glory as our en- 
dowment, we are called upon to undertake what of ourselves 
.we have neither the strength nor the funds to accomplish. 

" We have watched with the deepest interest an experiment 
of enlargement which has come under our own observation. 
A missionary treasury, taxed to the utmost for years to meet 
the demands upon it, was assessed at one stroke an extra fifty 
thousand dollars annually for a new work which the provi- 
dence of God seemed to enjoin. Seven years have passed 



AS MAKING MANY RICH 253 

since the undertaking, and yet the treasury has kept just as 
full through all this period, notwithstanding the extra draft, as 
during the seven years previous. Certainly this outcome does 
not seem like a divine admonition not to do so again, but 
rather like a loud invitation to repeat the experiment upon the 
first new call. And now, when the bugle is sounding for an 
advance along the entire line, we do well to mark the signifi- 
cance of such experiments. Our Lord does not say, ' Be it 
unto you according to your funds/ but, ' Be it unto you ac- 
cording to your faith.' If he sees that we trust him for large 
missionary undertakings, he will trust us with large missionary 
remittances. If, on the contrary, we demand great things of 
God as a condition of attempting great things for God, we 
shall be disappointed ; for that is not believing, but bargaining. 
1 Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou 
shouldest see the glory of God ? ' (John xi. 40.) Shall we 
reverse this order, and believe only according as we have seen 
that glory? If so, he will give us little credit for our faith. 
Most significantly is it written, ' Many believed on his name 
because they saw the miracles which he did ; but Jesus did 
not believe in them.' (John ii. 23, vide Greek.)" 

This was the theory which, in the administration of mission- 
ary interests, Dr. Gordon advocated. As a pastor of a local 
church supporting and contributing to the executive board, he 
proceeded upon similar lines. The faith element became, as 
the spiritual life of pastor and church progressed, the domi- 
nating factor in this ministration. In the early years of his 
pastorate it was customary to appoint collectors, who went 
about once a year soliciting for the missionary fund. A 
friendly rivalry always existed among these. To secure more 
than any other collector gave one a pleasant prestige among 
the friends in the church. The regular church contributions 
were made once a month. The amounts given were relatively 
small, the proportions contributed to outside missions and 



254 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

charities being often not half the current expenses of the 
church. 

Soon after Gordon became pastor he set about to develop 
deeper convictions of responsibility in this direction. Syste- 
matic giving was urged. " Milk a cow every other day, and 
you will be sure to dry her up. How much more certainly 
will a church be dried up by infrequent giving!" he once re- 
marked. Weekly collections were advocated, but this was 
felt by many to be too radical a step. " It will drive people 
away," was the commonly expressed opinion. And so for 
many years the old system lingered on. The pastor did not, 
however, relax his efforts to create new standards and new 
ideals of giving. In a series of sermons on the subject de- 
livered in the early years, he said : 

" Let a decree go out from the Lord's day that every week 
shall be taxed, and you will soon find that your business hours 
have received a wonderful consecration. Instead of looking 
back upon your six working-days as a band of marauders, 
each making way into the irrevocable past with its plunder 
of time ai d energy and devotion, you will see each of them 
marching up to pay its tribute to him who is Lord of the 
Sabbath. 

"Thus the Lord's day to the Christian will be a kind of 
summary and epitome of his week-days. Instead of being a 
periodic exception, a fragment of holy time interjected between 
certain portions of secular time, it ought to be the culmination 
of all his week, the flower of his days, that has drawn all their 
finest juices into itself. Business robbing God, a ledger pur- 
loining the attention that belongs of right to the Bible, work 
trenching on the rights of worship in family or private — all 
this is to be regretted and mourned over. But if, when Sun- 
day comes round, it puts the climax on this fraud of holy 
things, compelling God to say, ' Ye have robbed me in tithes 
and offerings/ our case is truly pitiable. For it is to indorse 



AS MAKING MANY RICH 255 

and, as it were, reiterate our six days* remissness by a seventh 
day's defalcation. 

" What are we to do, then? Lay by in store each Sabbath 
a deposit for the Lord. Then see if you do not get your 
heart into your Sundays. See if you do not get dividends of 
grace that you never knew of as falling due on that day. See 
if your whole worship is not pervaded with a new spirit and 
power thenceforth. 

" How thoroughly this rule, if observed, would fix in us the 
habit of a thoughtful consideration of God's mercies! How 
profoundly would it discipline our inward spirit to the truth 
that we are only pensioners of our Father and almoners of his 
bounty! The Lord's day worship would be more sincere, 
more hearty, more chastened, if we came to it always from a 
little sanctuary at home, where we had settled in quiet medi- 
tation the claims of God upon us and apportioned out our 
sacrifice for him. It would turn our charity into orderly and 
systematic service for the Lord who bought us instead of leav- 
ing it to be, what it so often is, the unripe fruit of emotion or 
the heartless price which we render to the demands of custom 
or respectability. 

" I would, therefore, that we could bring ourselves to a lit- 
eral and whole-hearted conformity to this apostolic rule, 
1 Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by 
at home [this the words mean literally] as God hath prospered 
him.' Here is a kind of family devotion, an act of private 
and household worship, in preparation for the service of God's 
house. If it were habitual with us it would, I am sure, settle 
all our difficulties in regard to this department of our Christian 
service. The calm hour of retrospection on the Lord's day 
morning, wherein all the mercies of the week should be made 
to pass before the memory ; the mind that has been busy for 
itself now sitting for God at the receipt of custom and taking 
tribute from all the week-day blessings ; gratitude summing up 



256 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

the account and directing the obedient worshiper how much 
to carry with him to the sanctuary — if this were our method, 
there would be great inequality in our contributions, indeed, 
since the degrees of human prosperity are infinitely various; 
but there would be perfect adjustment of charity to necessity, 
since the returns would be according to God's providence and 
not according to man's caprice. In that providence, summing 
up all its variations, there is a perfect equilibrium between 
man's ability to give and man's necessity of receiving." 

As the years passed on, and as the needs and opportunities 
of foreign work became more deeply impressed upon him, he 
labored with increased zeal to educate his people in giving and 
to stimulate their self-denial. He would make special appeals, 
the strain of which upon himself was to the last degree taxing. 
He urged immediate giving, placing in strong contrast post- 
mortem and present-day benevolence. " Is it not distinctly 
affirmed in Scripture that we must all appear before the judg- 
ment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the deeds done 
in his body? " he would say. " Why, then, should Christians so 
industriously plan that their best deeds should be done after 
they get out of the body? Is there any promise of recom- 
pense for this extra corpus benevolence? And, after all, these 
benevolences of the dead hand are usually nullified. By a 
strange irony of custom we call a man's legacy his ' will ' ; it 
is really too frequently an ingenious contrivance for getting 
one's will defeated." 

He urged his people, too, to limit to the lowest figure pos- 
sible the expenditures on their own worship. " Ecclesiastical 
luxuries " always irritated him. " If the angels are invisible 
spectators of the church," he said, " what must their impres- 
sion of our sanctuary self-indulgence not be! Can we not 
easily imagine them shutting their ears to these voluptuous 
strains and holding their noses at these sickening odors of 
Easter flowers, and eagerly searching through the whole 



AS MAKING MANY RICH 257 

elaborate scene that they may, perchance, ' rejoice over one 
sinner' bowing in the dust of repentance?" Neither did he 
stop here. Many times he notified the standing committee 
of the church that he did not need or ask for the salary which 
he received, and urged them finally to give him no fixed 
amount, but whatever the people might choose. This was 
never done ; yet his personal contributions to missions were 
so frequent and so large as to lead virtually to the same result. 
" If it be asked, ( How about costly ministers?' " he said once, 
when speaking on church administration, " we will not wince 
under the question. ' Even so hath the Lord ordained that 
they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.' But 
this can signify no more than a humble and modest support. 
It gives no warrant for sumptuous salaries or palatial parson- 
ages or the accumulation of clerical fortunes. Is not the 
teaching of ecclesiastical history sufficiently solemn on this 
point? And are there not tendencies visible among the min- 
istry in our great cities which should occasion deep heart- 
searching? Like priest, like people! We have no doubt 
that our missionary contributions would soon reach the high- 
water mark if in every pulpit the Christ-like humility of be- 
coming poor in order to make many rich should reach the 
low- water mark.' ? 

Year by year the contributions of the church reached higher 
points in spite of the fact that the proportion of wealthy mem- 
bers was steadily declining. In the last five years remarkable 
results in this line were attained. There had been a cumula- 
tive education which was now yielding its fruits. Giving was, 
furthermore, made by both pastor and people the subject of 
special prayer. Direct appeals, with all that they implied of 
exhausting anxiety, were a thing of the past. " I am tempted 
never to beg a cent for God again, but rather to spend my 
energy in getting Christians spiritualized, assured that they 
will then become liberalized," he wrote ; and again : " Experts 



258 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

in such matters say that a bottle of wine that cannot throw- 
out its own cork is rarely good for much. Certainly a Chris- 
tian's prayers and gifts and testimonies are of little value if 
they do not come forth by the effervescence of his own in- 
ward spiritual joy. For one, I am tired of using the pulpit 
corkscrew to draw out of Christians the offerings and prayers 
and service which, to be of real value, ought to be spontane- 
ous. I shall continue to pray and persuade and plead, but I 
shall not come begging you to do your duty. ' My people 
shall be willing in the day of my power,' says the Lord." 

Statements were made of the needs of fields. Missionaries 
and Christian workers were constantly invited to present their 
causes. When large contributions were required, the situation 
would be presented and the people urged to go to their homes 
and consider prayerfully their personal accountability. Some- 
times several weeks intervened before the collection was taken, 
in order that the full import and responsibility might be felt, 
and that the giving might not be prompted by a mere impulse 
or by an unhealthy, feverish enthusiasm. The results were 
extraordinary. Money came often from wholly unexpected 
sources. Thus when the contribution for the Centenary Mis- 
sionary Fund was made (a contribution which amounted to 
the aggregate benevolent contributions of the first four years 
of Gordon's pastorate), a gift of ^\x^t hundred dollars was sent 
in by one unconnected with the church or denomination and 
wholly unknown to the members.* The outside gifts of the 

* "I am glad to get the good tidings of you contained in your letter 
and circular. Especially do I rejoice to know of your interest in the great 
theme — the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I am now more and more per- 
suaded that the greatest things are possible if only we have his power 
resting upon us. I have seen such a demonstration in my church last 
year as I never witnessed before. We met morning after morning in the 
early year simply to pray for the power of the Holy Ghost. We were 
looking for a revival. When I made my plea for foreign missions, I 
astonished my conservative brethren by asking ten thousand dollars this 



AS MAKING MANY RICH 259 

church, chiefly to missions, amounted from 1890 to 1895 to 
nearly eighty-five thousand dollars. The influence of this ex- 
ample upon the Baptist churches at large was, according to 
the testimony of the Executive Board, very great and very 
salutary. 

year for our contribution. Only a few wealthy men among us, and they 
not likely to do largely. But when the collection was gathered twenty 
thousand dollars came, nobody asked, no solicitation made. It was sim- 
ply a great impulse of the Spirit, and the astonishment of all still continues. 
Now is coming a gracious ingathering of souls." 



CHAPTER XX 



DRILLING THE RECRUITS 



Establishment of the Boston Missionary Training-school — Administration 
on faith principles — The assault on the school— Dr. Gordon's reply 
— " Short-cut methods " 

IN the winter of '89 a new agency was started for the fur- 
therance of evangelistic work throughout the earth. In 
various ways Dr. Gordon had been made conscious of the 
stirrings which were profoundly moving men in the common 
walks of life to missionary service. He had noticed also, with 
sorrow, the deficit of laborers for certain difficult fields. 

"In Africa," he wrote in a letter, "we nearly forfeited our 
opportunity for want of men. I determined, therefore, to do 
what I might to find them for that field. We have learned 

what such men can do from the example of , who has 

been in Africa three years and has proved a master mission- 
ary. The sum of my wisdom on this point is what I have 
learned at the Missionary Board. I think of those whom we 
hesitated over and at first rejected because of a want of the 
qualifications which we considered of first importance. And 
then to see how God has rebuked us by showing how won- 
derfully he could use them! I must speak in confidence, but 
that is the history of three within my memory, every one of 
whom now stands as a confessed leader in his field. I think 
that I, for one, have learned the lesson, 'What God has 
cleansed, call not thou common or unclean/ The experience 

260 



DRILLING THE RECRUITS 261 

of years has demonstrated that there are scores of men, from 
thirty to forty years of age, who hear the call to missionary 
service at home or abroad. What shall be done for such? 
This is a question over which I am more sad than hopeful. 
It is not easy to persuade them that they may do acceptable 
service for the Lord, and besides this, there is the humiliation 
of the 'short-cut' stigma now on so many lips. Altogether, 
it is hard to inspire them with confidence. Well, may the 
Lord direct us all into the perfect knowledge of his will, and 
make us ready to do that will as it shall be revealed to us. . . ." 
After much prayer and long consideration, the Boston Mis- 
sionary Training-school was opened in the old Bowdoin Square 
Church. Its aim was to exercise men and women in practical 
religious work in the neglected parts of the city, and to fur- 
nish them with a thoroughly biblical training. For this project 
there were high precedents. In a volume published later* 
Dr. Gordon described the extraordinary work accomplished 
on these lines by Pastors Harms and Gossner. The results 
which attended the labors of these pioneers doubtless consti- 
tute an important plea justificatory, if such is required, for the 
policy of providing, as Gordon phrased it, " plain men with 
a plain outfit." " It is the sacrilege of Christianity," so he 
writes, "that the church has so often undertaken to manu- 
facture missionaries by priestly ordination or by literary train- 
ing. The prerogative of furnishing the ministry for his own 
church is sublimely accorded to Christ alone. It is his office 
to give the various orders of the ministry, ours to ask for them 
and to receive and recognize them when sent." To furnish 
preparation for those who were thus burdened with a divine 
call — the laymen desirous of doing evangelistic work, whom 
the seminaries seem hardly to care to train, the women who 
hoped to undertake zenana work abroad or slum work at 
home, the Christian engaged during the day at ledger or in 

* " The Holy Spirit in Missions." 



262 * ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

shop, who might wish to obtain evenings a systematic know- 
ledge of the Bible, the candidate for the foreign field of ad- 
vanced age and slight resources — in short, to supplement the 
work and to enlarge the constituency of the seminary by estab- 
lishing a sort of seminary extension, this enterprise was cau- 
tiously and humbly launched. 

The move was made not without much hesitation. Indeed, 
it would never have been made at all except from a feeling of 
divine constraint. A burden of this character is not assumed 
lightly by a man whose hands are full. That Gordon consid- 
ered it the Lord's work is evident from the distinct way in 
which, as the condition precedent to his own participation in 
it, he required of Him the supply of all its pecuniary needs. 
To those of the committee who brought out at the first meet- 
ing little subscription books with the purpose of soliciting funds, 
he gave a point-blank refusal. He ''declined once for all to 
make the Lord Jesus a pauper," and refused to allow any con- 
nected with the undertaking to " wait in rich men's counting- 
rooms, hat in hand," for subscriptions to the Lord's work. In 
a letter engaging an instructor he wrote, " Of course we begin 
without funds, depending on the Lord for help ; but we shall 
try to look after our fellow-helpers." 

In continuous, strenuous, unremitting prayer, however, 
there was no slackening ; and the prayers were not unhonored. 
From the inception of the enterprise to the present time its needs 
have been invariably provided for. To recount the numerous 
incidents illustrating the reality— the concrete, definite, prov- 
ing reality — of answer to prayer, would be here impossible. 
Money was sent from entirely unexpected quarters. On one 
occasion, for example, a large wooden box came by express 
from a back town in Indiana — evidently from one who did 
not venture to trust the banks or the government to transmit 
his funds— containing a great, bulky roll of one- and two-dol- 
lar bills, perhaps the frugal saving of years. Again, an en- 



DRILLING THE RECRUITS 263 

velop was handed the treasurer by an unknown person, which 
was found on opening to contain four one-hundred dollar 
bills. The donor has not been seen since. At another time, 
when the needs of the school were unusually pressing, Dr. Gor- 
don was in his study asking of the Lord some token of his 
watch-care and of his continued provision. On reaching 
home he found that one hundred and fifty dollars had been left 
by a stranger, one who, as it was afterward learned, had been 
healed in answer to prayer, and who was now determined to 
give even out of poverty to the important work of preparing 
men and women for a missionary life. 

Such instances— and there are many others in the outline 
handed to the writer— are not unique. They are the natural 
sequence of the prayer of faith the world over. Like cause 
has produced like effects in the work of M uller, of Spurgeon, 
of Guinness, of Simpson, of Christlieb, of Hudson Taylor, of 
Gordon. If the Vine is interested in the life of the branch, it 
must be even more so in the prosperity of the fruit. It is not 
supposable that He would refuse to it the life-giving sap through 
the agency of which it can alone be filled and developed. 
" How long do you expect to carry on this work? " was fre- 
quently asked. " Until the Lord forgets to supply its needs," 
was the unfailing answer. And the Lord never forgot. We 
all remember Sancho Panza, hanging desperately from the 
window all the night long, his toes within three inches of the 
ground, his forehead beaded with perspiration, in abject terror 
of the supposed abyss beneath. A parable, truly, of most 
Christians, and a type of the conduct of many Christian insti- 
tutions! Here was one, however, who had dropped and had 
found beneath him the great round globe of God's care. 

The new work was not begun without serious trial and op- 
position. Hardly were the doors of the unobtrusive and 
modest institute opened before the assault began. Cold con- 
troversies, like cold dishes, leave so disagreeable a taste that 



264 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

one would willingly pass them by. Yet there is a lesson in the 
very unaccountableness of the storm of criticism which followed. 
In the church to which both critics and criticized belonged 
there is supposed to be complete freedom of action. The 
ideal of the statesman, local self-government, is here, as hardly 
elsewhere, fully attained. Yet this happy absence of a cen- 
tral authority is a standing temptation to men of a pontifical 
spirit to assert themselves and to adopt the principle, Ubi Petrus 
ibi ecclesia, substituting, consciously or not, their own names 
for Peter's. This is especially true of those who are intrusted 
with the management of the denominational press. The ex- 
cathedra utterance is heard quite as loudly from behind the 
roll-top desk of the editor as from the recesses of an ecumeni- 
cal council. Baron Bunsen, so his biographer tells us, was 
wont to have by his bedside a candle-extinguisher wrought in 
the shape of a Jesuit padre, who very properly and signifi- 
cantly, we may imagine, rejoiced in his function of putting out 
lights. The editors of certain religious weeklies would have 
made equally suggestive figures. What was worse, in the pres- 
ent case Dr. Gordon's assailants seem to have been very much 
of the disposition of John Lilburn, the Puritan, of whom it was 
said that, if he could get no one to fight with him, he would 
set the John against the Lilburn and so precipitate a quarrel. 
Now Gordon was wont to say, in speaking of the training 
of humble men for Christian work, that "he preferred a little 
man with a great gospel to great men with a little gospel." 
Whatever the reason — whether the worship of our American 
fetish, education, or that temper of mind which stickles for 
the conventional method and for a lawn-tied uniformity, as of 
bobbins in a cotton-mill ; whether it was the spirit which accepts 
nothing unless "hammered on its own anvil" and having 
its own die, will take no coin save that with the image and 
superscription of an accepted system— whatever the cause at 
bottom, it is certain that these great men of the press did furi- 



DRILLING THE RECRUITS 265 

ously assail the champion of the " little man." To realize the 
bitterness with which the school was attacked one has only to 
turn back the files of the New York " Examiner " to the win- 
ter of '89. " The short-cut plan," a characterization pecu- 
liarly pleasing to these critics, was denounced as "a method 
fraught with grave perils to our denomination." It was 
questioned whether such schools " could be established with- 
out both brains and money and a great deal of both." It was 
doubted whether "the strong common sense of the Baptist 
laity, from whom the money was to come, could be brought 
to support" this novelty. It was claimed "that the new 
school could do a great deal of harm, and that the sooner de- 
nominational opinion was decisively expressed against it, and 
its abandonment secured, the better for every cause that 
Baptists have at heart." "The Bowdoin Square craze" was 
denounced as " a movement for reversing educational qualifi- 
cations among the Baptists, and as an accusation of incompe- 
tence against our seminaries." The demand for " half-educated 
but self-confident men " was ridiculed, and finally (indicating 
perhaps the real animus of the attack) the doctrine of the ever 
imminent return of the Lord Jesus derided as the mainspring 
of this piece of educational fanaticism. 

No direct reply was made to these attacks at first. A sym- 
posium, however, was arranged between the opponents of the 
school and Francis Wayland, who, as the father of higher 
education among the Baptists, would perhaps be listened to 
with respect. A clever appeal was thus made to denomina- 
tional precedents. From the neutral position of moderator 
Gordon could, without participating directly in the discussion, 
enjoy the sight of the denominational Nestor rebutting the 
aspersions of the editors and discomfiting the "young pro- 
fessor of divinity who has proposed an assignment of our 
effects, though as yet we have incurred no debts, and who has 
named the parties to act ' as reversionary heirs.* " 



266 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

The contrasted views were ranged in deadly parallel down 
a column or more of blanket-sheet. We have indicated 
the positions taken by the complainants. The reverent, 
spiritual, kindly, and yet shrewd and far-seeing defense which 
President Wayland makes of a varied ministry and of the 
mission of the unprivileged as workers in the kingdom of God 
we cannot here quote at length. It suffices to say that it 
rebuked those children of the Sorbonne who in America and 
in our day are so strongly emphasizing mere ecclesiastical 
standing. He declared that a refusal to employ " every laborer" 
was " equivalent to abandoning the effort to evangelize the 
world." He objected "to giving to education a place not 
authorized by Jesus Christ, thus establishing a ministerial 
caste." He declared that if it were true that a Baptist is "not 
to preach the gospel without years of heathen learning, or if 
he does that he is nothing but a backwoodsman of whom 
every one ought to be ashamed, we are dead and plucked up 
by the roots" And finally says, "Of those called by God to 
the ministry some may not be by nature adapted to the prose- 
cution of a regular course of study. Many others are too old. 
Some are men with families. Only a portion are of an age 
and under conditions which will allow them to undertake 
what is called a regular training for the ministry ; that is, two 
or three years in an academy, four years in college, and three 
years in a seminary. Therefore theological training should be 
so adapted as to give the greatest assistance to each of these 
various classes. Let each take what he can, and then the 
seminary is at rest." 

It was characteristic of Gordon to turn attention from him- 
self and his work and to avoid controversy in this admira- 
ble and satisfactory way. It was equally characteristic of him, 
when a friend was ungenerously and unjustly attacked, to 
enter the lists in his behalf. For when " the chorus of indo- 
lent reviewers " turned on Mr. Guinness, the reply from Gor- 



DRILLING THE RECRUITS 267 

don's pen was immediate. No one who reads it will ques- 
tion to whom belonged, in this instance, that perennial advan- 
tage which the courteous and quick-witted have in every con- 
troversy. 

SHORT-CUT METHODS 

" They were indignant at the assumptions of this man, who, without 
having attended a beth-ha midrash (house of instruction), and without 
being able to show up a horaah (certificate of ordination), had ventured 
to become a teacher." — Delitzsch's " A Day in Capernaum." 

" The ' Examiner's ' recent editorial on ' new short-cut 
methods seems to demand a word of reply. A dislike of con- 
troversy has restrained us hitherto. But since this article has 
been followed by two others equally misleading and injurious 
in their implications, we now take in hand to set forth the 
whole matter. 

" Early in the year, Dr. Guinness, of London, became my 
guest. I found that he was deeply burdened for Africa, liter- 
ally bearing it on his heart night and day with tears. As the 
founder of the Congo Mission, he longs that we should go in 
and possess our heritage on that great ' Baptist river.' Our 
mission there is confessedly the most prosperous of any in the 
region, fifty in a month having been baptized during the last 
year at one of the stations, where there is now a church of four 
hundred baptized believers. And yet, when Dr. Guinness, who 
planted this mission at such cost of life and money, and who 
five years ago gave it to us, arrived here, we had not sent to 
that field a single native American ordained missionary, for the 
reason that we had sought in vain for such to go. Without a 
word of criticism of this fact, he began to visit our theological 
schools and colleges, white and colored, to beg for reinforce- 
ments. All this he did at his own expense, holding missionary 
meetings almost daily, during the summer months, and working 



268 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

nights on the Scriptures, so that, by the aid of an African boy 
whom he kept with him, he translated the entire Epistle to the 
Romans into the Congo dialect, in order to help on the work 
of our missionaries. I am sure that he did all this from the 
most disinterested motives, and with the sole desire to forward 
the work that lies nearest his heart. I am therefore the more 
sorry that the ' Examiner ' should seek to create prejudice 
against him by slurring him as 'a Plymouth Brother' who is 
attempting to shape our missionary policies. The simple fact 
is that he is not a Plymouth Brother, and never was ; but a 
Baptist minister, for twenty years a member of Rev. Archibald 
Brown's church in East London, who, in addition to his great 
labors for the foreign field, has constantly worked as an evan- 
gelist in that wretched region of the great metropolis, and as 
the result of his labors has gathered and organized two or 
three flourishing Baptist churches. 

" I am equally sorry that the scare of premillenarianism 
should be raised in this connection. If the writer belongs to 
this school in obedience to what he believes to be the literal 
teaching of Scripture, he considers himself neither better nor 
worse than his Baptist fathers, many of whom have held this 
view. Indeed, it is interesting to recall that one of Air. 
Spurgeon's predecessors in the ministry, Benjamin Keach, 
was put in the pillory for several days on the two charges of 
Anabaptism and premillenarianism. But it was a lord chief 
justice of the Episcopal Church who inflicted this humiliation 
on a Baptist pastor, and it furnishes no precedent for a Bap- 
tist paper's attempting the same thing on Baptist pastors of 
to-day. As touching the question of missions, premillennialists 
maintain nothing peculiar except that during this dispensation 
the doctrine of 'election according to grace' holds true, and 
that the scriptural promises concerning world-wide conversion 
are to be completely fulfilled only in the next or millennial age. 
And is it possible that any of our denominational papers have 



DRILLING THE RECRUITS 269 

become so Arminianized that they must be constantly deriding 
consistent Calvinists for holding this doctrine of election, as 
though it were some novel article of faith? But let it be 
remembered that, in connection with the subject under con- 
sideration, no one has raised this question except the ' Ex- 
aminer/ and no one has intended to do so. 

" How can we secure more missionaries? Dr. Guinness, see- 
ing the earnest, soul-saving work going on constantly under the 
ministry of Pastor Deming in the Bowdoin Square Tabernacle, 
suggested to him and myself that we open in that church and 
in the adjoining buildings ' a recruiting-station for lay mission- 
ary workers.' The enterprise was designed to give practical 
experience in evangelistic work, and a course of systematic 
biblical study. So far from intending to interfere with any 
higher schools of biblical learning, or to encourage a short 
cut into the ministry, we undertook the work solely for the 
benefit of such as could not by any possibility avail themselves 
of these advantages. In our prospectus this sentence occurs : 
* All students whose gifts and age warrant them in taking full 
college and seminary courses of study will be strenuously en- 
couraged to do so/ It will thus be seen that the ' Examiner* 
has raised a false issue, and has undertaken to set us by the 
ears with those with whom there can be no controversy. 
The applicants for admission have come from the carpenter's 
bench, from the painter's pot, from the tailor's shop, some of 
them confessing to a desire which had burdened them for 
years to give themselves to foreign missionary service, but see- 
ing no chance till this door opened. They are all poor, and 
have undertaken, while engaged in study, to work for their 
board in such places as the Tabernacle Employment Office 
may furnish them. With the superb opportunities for higher 
culture which our denominational colleges and schools afford, 
is it quite gracious to grudge these poor men this very humble 
opportunity for instruction in the Word of God ? 



270 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

" But will it do to encourage such candidates for missionary 
service ? We have three or four precedents to which we can 
appeal for an answer, and in every instance the result has been 
satisfactory. A member of my own church, for example, was 
sent to India by the Executive Committee of the Union as a lay 
missionary on half the usual pay. He had absolutely no theo- 
logical training except that received by the Spirit's work in his 
heart. Yet, after five years of most self-denying service, his 
co-laborers have asked for his ordination, one of them, in a 
letter to his pastor, acknowledging that in intelligent zeal and 
in practical success he has proved himself not a whit behind 
the very chiefest of missionaries on that field. This example, 
seconded by others eminently satisfactory, suggests that, by 
inviting such men as this to enter missionary service, we may 
do much more than we are doing to meet the great emergency 
which is upon us. 

" The question raised, therefore, by all the training-schools 
referred to in this connection is simply this : ' Shall earnest 
men and women who hear the call to missionary service, but 
whose age and circumstances absolutely bar them from obtain- 
ing any higher education, be helped to such biblical prepara- 
tion as a few pastors, out of their very meager store, may give 
them, and then be sent forth, provided always that there are 
missionary boards willing to employ them? ' This last question 
is declared by one of the most eminent missionary secretaries 
of this country to be one that is now confronting every great 
missionary society. And it might have modulated the ' Ex- 
aminer's ' outburst of sarcasm against ' Boanerges Jones and 
Chrysostom Smith,' with their ' aggravated attack of big head ' 
in presuming to undertake the work of saving souls without 
college or seminary preparation, to have known that the con- 
servative Church Missionary Society of England is the first 
board to settle this question, having recently resolved to call 
out and put into the field a large body of lay workers, who 



DRILLING THE RECRUITS 271 

shall consent to go on a limited salary, no other preparation 
being insisted upon than a simple knowledge of the way of 
salvation as revealed in Scripture. 

" This whole outcry against an uneducated ministry we hold 
to be not a mark of genuine culture, but of intellectual snob- 
bishness. The following sentence, from a recent article in the 
' Independent/ by Professor Samuel I. Curtiss, on the late Pro- 
fessor Christlieb, is instructive in this connection : 

" ' Perhaps/ says Professor Curtiss, ' he was the only theo- 
logical professor in a German university who has ever knelt in 
a prayer-meeting. He was accustomed to meet with a small 
circle of earnest evangelical Christians in the Scotch-Irish 
church in Bonn. After the death of the pastor, Dr. Graham, 
he purchased the church and the house connected with it as a 
place for training evangelists. It was called the Johanneum. 
It was his earnest desire to raise up godly young men who 
should engage in evangelistic work in Germany. In his later 
years, in connection with more abstemious habits in the use of 
wine and cigars ( ! ), he became a premillenarian in his theo- 
logical views.' 

" The ' Johanneum ' here referred to was started for precisely 
the purpose of which we have been speaking. Professor 
Christlieb sorrowfully recognized the fact that the German 
clergy, with all their high culture, were utterly failing to reach 
the lower classes, especially in the great cities. Therefore he 
conceived the idea of calling into the service plain men— 
artisans, clerks, and laborers— who, with a simple knowledge 
of Scripture, might be able to address these people in their 
own dialect. He gave himself to the work of raising up such 
a class, teaching theology in the university, and at the same 
time humbling himself to instruct in the Bible these lay work- 
ers. His work was met with the same conservative frown 
which has been turned on less pretentious efforts in this coun- 
try. The feeling raised against this movement in Germany 



272 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

was such that Christlieb was obliged to appeal to America and 
England for help in training and sending out these lay evan- 
gelists. I had the honor to serve as one of the American 
committee for receiving and transmitting funds, and I had 
by this means considerable opportunity to learn something 
of the blessed and soul-saving results of this much-despised 
work. 

" Let it be clearly understood, in fine, that this undertaking 
is not for promoting any ' new ministerial short cut/ as the 
' Examiner ' affirms, but is an humble effort, undertaken with- 
out funds and without any intention of seeking an endow- 
ment, to enlist for lay missionary service men and women who 
otherwise might not find their way to the field. If the word 
' recruiting-station ' be kept in mind, none will be misled. 
Those of us engaged in this enterprise propose, in our mission- 
ary addresses and evangelistic tours and by correspondence, 
to appeal for volunteers for the foreign work ; as we secure 
such, to test them by a year's experience in city mission work, 
and if we find those whose age and circumstances warrant 
them in going to college or seminary, to help them in their 
way thither ; to others we will give the best practical and bibli- 
cal instruction we can." 

The interpretation of the new movement as antagonistic to 
higher theological education was as false as uncalled for. 
That the founder of the school was as friendly as ever to the 
seminaries can be easily seen from the following letter. Its 
real import is made more clear when it is known how largely 
the financial weight of his own enterprise pressed upon him, 
and how busily his pen WTought in those days to earn money 
for continuing the modest work which was being so acrimoni- 
ously criticized. For during the first year more than eight 
hundred dollars of his own salary was turned over to the 
school, and in succeeding years all the proceeds from copy- 



DRILLING THE RECRUITS 273 

rights and articles, as well as his entire income as coeditor of 
the " Missionary Review." 

" December 17, 1890. 
" To Professor Charles R. Brown : 

" . . . In regard to your appeal for Newton, I have been 
waiting for a favorable time to invite you and Burton to pre- 
sent the matter. In the crisis in the affairs of the Missionary 
Union— a debt of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars being 
inevitable unless immediate help is forthcoming — I have thrown 
my church into the breach. We are raising an extra five to 
ten thousand dollars before January 1st. After that, or be- 
fore the end of the year at least, I will try to give the matter 
attention. I wish to be put down for fifty dollars myself, and 
hope to continue the same yearly. I trust the work on the 
hill is greatly prospering." 

The attack on the school served to advertise it. Students 
began to come in from all parts of the country. Contribu- 
tions to its support followed. One lady wrote to the head of 
the school that she had read the " Examiner " articles, and 
that, though she had no knowledge of the working of the new 
project, was sure it must be a "good thing," else the " Exam- 
iner" would never have assailed it. She sent in the letter a 
large check and in each succeeding year gave generously toward 
current expenses. Later results richly repaid the investments of 
time and labor. Prayer and self-sacrifice are justified of their 
children. Graduates of the school are now working in all parts 
of the globe— in Algeria, in China, in India, on the Congo, in 
Barbadoes, in Oklahoma, and in the Soudan. Many have be- 
come efficient and prized city missionaries and pastors. One 
has charge of a chapel car and has founded a hundred or 
more new churches since he began his work. Of the apostolic 
labors of those who have fallen in Africa and elsewhere, we 



2J4 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

might speak at length.* Suffice it to say that they died for 
the testimony of Jesus after much toil and suffering, and that 
their praise is on all lips. Of the summer work of students in 
the destitute parts of Maine and among the hills of Vermont 
and New Hampshire we have spoken elsewhere. The letters 
which come back from the graduates are full of gratitude and 
affection for the school, for the instructors, and for the found- 
er. Finally, the numerous institutions of a like character 
which have sprung up all over the country constitute a rein- 
forcing justification for the establishment of the Boston Mis- 
sionary Training-school. They point to a recognition of the 
need of such schools, and of the adequate way in which the 
need was here satisfied. 

* David Miller in the Soudan ; Richard Jones, Banza Manteke, Free 
State of Congo; and Idalette Mills, Barbadoes. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE PREACHER AND THE PULPIT 

Dr. Gordon as a preacher — His view of what the pulpit should be — Power 
in illustration — Examples 

" r I A HE mutes," said a recent French critic of the pulpit, 
A "are on all the violins of God." Preaching has be- 
come too often in our city churches an art where it should be 
an enthusiasm. It ripples from a type-written manuscript ; it 
ought to pour from a bursting heart. It suggests not the 
mountain cataracts, but the linden-lined canals of Holland. 
It is of Bossuet, not of Savonarola. Faultily faultless in finish 
and style, it recalls the sophist lecturing on ethics to the Roman 
ladies of the Antonines in some private amphitheater of mar- 
ble; it should rather bring up a prophet in leopard-skin to 
whom a message from God is intrusted. Ah, yes, the mutes are 
indeed on the violins. The old word " repent " is heard rarely 
save in undertone. The horror of sin has not taken hold as 
it must and will. The mighty rushing wind sweeps not yet 
over these fine-twisted, taut strings of silver. 

Whatever the character of Dr. Gordon's preaching in the 
earlier days, there was in him in the years of maturity little 
of the court preacher. He proclaimed without flinching the 
helplessness of man, the impotence of the unrenewed will, the 
destiny of sorrow and punishment to which the unconverted 
are drifting. And where the knife probed the ointment fol- 
lowed. For, while there was no abatement of stern truths, 

275 



276 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

there was in his preaching, as in the gospels, no want of ten- 
derness. As the Etruscans were wont to whip their slaves to 
the note of flutes, so did the preacher lay bare sin, yet with 
much gracious invitation and pointing away to the Lamb of 
God. Controversy he shunned as a canker. " Prophesying 
against the prophets of Israel that prophesy" would have 
been arduous work indeed to one so absorbed in holding up 
the perfect Christ before men. Self-advertisement never sug- 
gested itself to him ; he was but a wire to transmit currents. 

The best estimate of any preacher is apt to be his own esti- 
mate of what the pulpit should be. In the present case we 
have much information. The advice to ministers, the criti- 
cisms, favorable and unfavorable, on the development of the 
contemporary pulpit, and the suggestions and remarks and ob- 
servations on the whole subject of the ministry of the Word 
which Dr. Gordon left behind, would, if collected, constitute 
almost material enough for a text-book on homiletics — a text- 
book which, from the point of view of apostolic preaching, 
would be fairly classical. In reading these over w r e see, as it 
were, the fresh types from which the message has been struck. 
The man himself rises before us, massive in delivery, earnest 
in appeal, from whose lips rivers of living water flow continu- 
ally. Here is unconscious self-portraiture. 

Let us look, then, at the ideal which this preacher of God's 
truth set before him. The notes which we quote first, on 
"The Homiletic Habit," are indeed suggestive to those famil- 
iar with the absorbed look, the abstracted, meditative face of 
his week-days. Tauler was wont to draw his cap over his eyes 
that the violets might not disturb his introspections ; Gordon 
likewise lived much within the veil. 



" In one of Professor Shedd's admirable chapters on ' Hom- 
iletics ' we find the phrase, ' homiletic habit/ as descriptive of 



THE PREACHER AND THE PULPIT 277 

that mental mood which in ministers is most conducive to 
easy and successful preparation for the pulpit. We like the 
term and commend it to our brethren as exceedingly sugges- 
tive. The method by which the vast majority of sermons are 
produced is anything but easy and natural. Many are the 
result of the most painful retchings and strainings of the brain. 
Many are the issue of mere spasmodic throes of the intellect. 
Many have only a galvanic life, the heart having really given 
nothing of its own emotions for their inspiration. How few 
are part and parcel of the preacher's daily life — a piece cut 
from the texture of his habitual experience ! 

" Now it would be a grand thing if preachers could only 
live in their sermons. Milton declares that to be a poet one 
must make his whole life an heroic poem, and it is equally clear 
that to be a true preacher one must make his whole life a 
gospel sermon. It is a good thing to be able to find sermons 
in stones, but better to be able to find them in one's own heart. 
And he is a wise preacher who keeps his mind so filled with 
the seeds of Scripture, with the fruitful and springing germs 
of pious studies and meditations and experiences, that it read- 
ily yields the weekly harvest/and does not compel him to spend 
his time in gathering exotics from a foreign soil. The thoughts 
of other men can never be truly appropriated except they have 
been first planted and reproduced in our own experiences. 
Fervor a century old is poor leaven for a sermon of to-day. 
Unction fried out of the lore of some old divine is thin 
anointing for the discourse of the living preacher. These things 
must be peculiarly one's own in order to possess any real value. 
They must be the outcome of a genuine experience —the product 
and commodity of an habitual mental and spiritual discipline. 

" Hence the importance of keeping the mind and heart 
toned up with respect both to fervor and activity in order 
that the preacher may be able to bring forth freshly and read- 
ily the living message. 



278 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

11 There is an almost universal habit among ministers of let- 
ting down and unbending after the fatigues and pressure of 
the Lord's day. This is well, provided it does not result in 
disorganization and demoralization. But if the preacher in 
attempting to rest disbands his Sabbath thoughts and gives 
furlough to his holier frames and feelings so that several days 
are requisite to get them back into rank and file again for pro- 
ducing a sermon, his rest has been really a serious loss. Let 
a minister be Mondayish on Monday provided he does not 
thereby incapacitate himself for being Sundayish on the other 
days of the week — those days over which the work and wor- 
ship of the approaching Sunday must always project them- 
selves, and for the labors of which the strength and tone 
acquired upon the preceding Sunday should be always pru- 
dently economized. The minister can ill afford to let his fires 
go out and his mental machinery come to a dead standstill for 
a day. If he does, when he returns to work he will find much 
of the time which ought to be wholly used in producing de- 
manded for the mere work of starting up again. Having lost 
his preaching mood, he finds it exceedingly difficult to get it 
back again ; for a mood is not like a colt turned out to pasture 
that can be caught and bridled at will, but a very illusory and 
often refractory thing. And so, having to preach of necessity, 
he finds himself forced up to an unwelcome and ungenial task 
in the preparation of his discourses, instead of finding in this 
process of composition a grateful vent for the outflow and 
overflow of his resources and a joyful exercise of ready and 
spontaneously acting powers. 

" Preaching ought to be ' a mode of self,' to use Dr. Alex- 
ander's striking phrase — the exhibition of one's own religious 
life and experience. ... To be obliged to borrow a character 
to preach in is worse than being obliged to borrow a sermon 
to preach. The latter is literary plagiarism, and the former 
moral plagiarism, which is worse. Yet who that preaches has 



THE TREACHER AND THE PULPIT 279 

not been at times painfully conscious of his two personalities? 
Who does not feel that the perfect harmonizing of the two, 
the complete blending of the two into a consistent and insep- 
arable unity, is the greatest attainment for the work of the 
ministry? Nothing is stronger or more inexorable than habit. 
Blessed is the man to whom the duties, the spirit, the aim, 
and the example of the ministry have become a habit and no 
longer a painfully acquired exception. The best commentary 
on the whole subject may be found in the recent saying of 
Canon Wilberforce concerning his father — that 'in his later 
years he gave up preparing sermons, and simply prepared 
himself.' " 

11 

In the next few extracts polemical and sensational preach- 
ing is deprecated : 

" A Christian is the most powerful evidence of Christianity, 
and an infidel is the most potent factor of infidelity. Let the 
man of God do his utmost to conquer the man of no God, 
and skepticism will go inevitably. We have not the imperti- 
nence to call a halt in the war upon abstraction — so many hun- 
dred embattled theologians discharging their logic guns at 
agnosticism, positivism, atheism, and what not — but we may 
be pardoned for inviting a fresh assault upon agnostics and 
atheists, not in any martial attitude, but on our knees. If the 
thousand pulpits and churches in our land would concentrate 
their prayers, their faith, and their tender persuasions upon 
such skeptics as come within their range, what inroads w T ould 
be made upon unbelief within a few years! 

" 'Brethren,' writes James, 'if any of you do err from the 
truth, and one convert him ; let him know, that he which con- 
verteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul 
from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.' And shall we 



280 A DON/RAM JUDSON GORDON 

reverse the method, and first aim at the multitude of sins, bat- 
tling with the whole brood of doubts and denials and liberalities 
and speculations in hope that, having slain these, we may ar- 
rive at last at the sinner who harbors them, to turn him from 
the error of his way and save his soul from death? No ; the 
sinner converted, the multitude of sins will be swept away ; 
the doubter won, his doubts will vanish into air. God's war- 
fare does not set us first to reduce the circumvallation of doubt 
and unbelief, but to capture at once and completely the cita- 
del of the heart. Is it not true that most of the attacks on 
skepticism are made from a fondness for intellectual tourna- 
ments, or at least for the gaudium spolii, the joy of victory, 
which the contests may afford? Were the real purpose to win 
over the unbeliever, there would be often more self-denial 
than self-gratification in the undertaking. Let us lay doivn 
the cudgel and take up the cross. The beginning of strife is as 
when one letteth out water ; therefore leave off contention and 
take up prayer and pleading, that it may be as when one let- 
teth out tears." 

in 

" One of the most fatal errors of the time is that ministers 
undertake to be feeders of men instead of fishers of men. 
One cannot be fed upon the gospel until he has been renewed. 
But what if a preacher with a crowd of unconverted hearers 
before him makes it his chief aim to feed them, instead of 
dropping the gospel hook among them, and holding it there 
until upon its barbed point somebody is pricked in the heart 
and led to cry out, ' What must I do to be saved? ' and so be 
caught for Christ ? Feeding the fish may be very exciting 
business, but it is very profitless. Bait with no hook on it, 
bait consisting of popular hits at the faults and inconsistencies 
of the church, keen thrusts at the stupid bigotry of the old 
musty creeds, sharp innuendoes about sanctimonious deacons 



THE PREACHER AND THE PULPIT 281 

and hypocritical professors — what a stir and excitement and 
flash of exhilaration will follow when a handful is thrown out! 
By it how many fish will be caught? Nay ; ' I will make you 
fishers/ not feeders, ' of men.' Catch the fish first and bring 
them into a regenerated life ; then they will have a relish for 
the solid and substantial food of Scripture truth, and we shall 
not have to feed them on the bait of popular novelty and bits 
of sensationalism. . . . 

" But let us not forget that we are sent to save men, not to 
destroy them ; to win them, not to wound them. And, there- 
fore, what glory is it that we have won a reputation for keen- 
ness in rebuke, for brilliancy in pulpit repartee, for pungency 
in hitting off the faults and foibles of our brethren? It is 
a short road to popularity, indeed. Let it be known that a 
minister on next Sunday is going to give a hot, spicy discourse 
on the crookedness of deacons and the shallowness of Chris- 
tians in general, and it will be sure to call out a large atten- 
dance. The popularity of some of our most noted preachers 
has been largely due to their ingenuity in this direction. But 
this is not our calling as Christians. It is for us to set forth 
the beauty and excellency of Jesus Christ, and not to exhibit 
the follies and blemishes of human nature. In either case we 
shall be unconsciously assimilated to the image of that on 
which we dwell. ' I do not allow myself to look at a bad 
picture/ said Sir Peter Lely, the artist, 'for if I do my brush 
is certain to take a hint from it.' Caricaturists of human 
nature likewise come at last to present very bad specimens of 
human nature in their own character. They learn uncon- 
sciously to personate their own pictures and to exemplify their 
own exaggerations. Take now and then a sorrowful look at 
human nature, but for one look in this direction take ten to- 
ward the perfect Christ and hold him up steadily and faith- 
fully, and all the while you will be growing into the same 
image from glory to glory." 



282 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 



IV 

Compactness, humility, unwearied reiteration of the truth, 
unction, the preeminent use of the Word, the avoidance of 
speculative preaching, the commingling of the sterner truths 
of the gospel with the more pleasing in due proportion, are 
inculcated in the extracts which follow : 

" That is an admirable and witty homiletic maxim, ' Do not 
make too many heads to your sermon, lest you may not be 
able to find ears for them all ! ' Indeed, having the ears al- 
ready at hand, how many a minister by his long sword of in- 
tolerable prolixity wantonly repeats the offense of Peter upon 
the servant of the high priest ! Brevity is not only the soul of 
wit, but the soul of wisdom for the preacher. . . . 

" Self-seeking corrupts everything and turns even the Lord's 
work into a means of self-promotion. How often the minis- 
ter quenches the Spirit by trying to shine! How often the 
soul-winner goes out of the pulpit because the great preacher 
has come in! . . . 

" What is considered a fault in rhetoric is a virtue in testimony, 
viz., repetition, saying the same thing again and againtill it has 
fairly worn a hole in men's indifference and let the light in. 

" The Lord would not have told Simon to put up his sword 
if it had been the sword of the Spirit that he was wielding. 
The sword of the Spirit lays open the heart, while the sword 
of the flesh only cuts off the ears. Now there has been a long 
succession of Petrine apostles, valiant swordsmen of the faith, 
whose principal ministerial trophies are severed ears, and not 
converted hearts ; who have preached with such two-edged 
severity as to alienate their hearers when they should have 
won them. The Lord has not called us to be theological 
gladiators, to win applause from the crowd by our skill in cut- 
ting and slashing. ... 



THE PREACHER AND THE PULPIT 283 

"We- are God's witnesses, not his logicians sent to argue 
men into the kingdom of heaven. We are not God's debaters, 
sent to discuss theology with men, and to convince them of 
the truth of Christianity. If this were so, we might well be 
afraid of getting worsted ; for the world is full of good logi- 
cians and skilled debaters— men that are more than a match 
for us on that ground. We, on the contrary, as Christ's ser- 
vants, are simply to bear witness year in and year out, using 
the Word of God, and not our own. Our success will not 
depend upon our acuteness or our eloquence or our skill, but 
upon God's Spirit, that accompanies and energizes that Word. 
It takes a strong muscle to throw a hand-ball so that it shall 
strike a hard blow ; but a child can fire a rifle-ball effectively, 
since the propelling power is in the powder and not in the 
muscle. So it takes a strong man to use an argument effec- 
tively ; but a babe in Christ can use a text of Scripture with 
prevailing force, since it is not by might nor by power, but by 
God's Spirit, that the text is impelled. ' The power of a word,' 
says Emerson, 'depends upon the power of the man that 
stands behind it.' But the power of God's Word depends 
upon the power of the Spirit that stands behind it, its inspirer 
and its abiding energizer. . . . 

" The sincere milk of the Word may be dispensed from the 
pulpit, yet given out so frigidly and unfeelingly as to make it 
very hard to receive. In Siberia the milkmen sometimes 
deliver their milk in chunks, not in quarts, it being frozen 
solid and thus carried about to the customers. Alas ! is not 
this the way many pulpits deliver the milk of the Word? It 
is the pure article, sound, orthodox, and unadulterated, but it 
is frozen into logical formularies and hardened and chilled 
by excessive reasonings. Let us so preach, O men of God, 
that our sermons shall not have to be thawed before they can 
be digested. . . . 

" Use nourishments instead of stimulants in your efforts to 



284 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

bring up the spiritual tone of the church. By stimulants we 
mean frantic appeals, severe denunciations, stinging rebuke. 
These rouse for the single day on which they are employed, 
but their effect is exhausted before the week is over, and the 
application must be repeated the next Sunday, and so on 
week after week. By nourishment we mean the Scriptures 
unfolded, expounded, and steadily applied. ' The words that 
I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.' . . . 

" Feet shod, not with the preparation of the gospel of peace, 
but with conjecture, tracking an experiment, running in the 
way of some unexplored ' perhaps ' — these can leave no path 
for sin-blinded and truant souls to walk in. . . . 

" Two chemical elements which are very mild and innocu- 
ous in themselves often have prodigious energy when combined. 
So it is with love and truth. Those who preach love alone 
are often the weakest and most ineffective witnesses for Christ ; 
those who preach the truth alone not infrequently demonstrate 
the impotence of a soulless orthodoxy. But the truth in love is 
vital, penetrating, and has the dynamic force which we seek. . . . 

" The highest reach of genius comes far short of the lowest 
degree of inspiration. To electrify a hearer is one thing ; to 
bring a hearer prostrate at the feet of Jesus, quite another. . . ." 

In power of illustration Dr. Gordon had few equals in the 
contemporary pulpit. His comparisons were always vivid, 
always, to use a fine French phrase, "palpitating with actu- 
ality." They had a power of instantaneous illumination, mak- 
ing clear at once any abstruseness in thought which it might 
be necessary to light up. Never were they haled in for their 
own sake. " Distinguished guests/' he was wont to say, "we 
may introduce with as extended formality as we choose, but 
we do not introduce our servants. They fulfil their office 
best by coming in quietly and unheralded, performing their 
proper duty, and then retiring. Illustrations are the preacher's 



THE PREACHER AND THE PULPIT 285 

servants. Their elaborate presentation to the audience tends 
to lift them out of their proper subordination, as though they 
came to be ministered unto instead of to minister." 

These illustrations were not raised, as turnips or roses, by 
careful cultivation. They were plucked by the wayside, and 
had all the freshness and artlessness of wild flowers. Return- 
ing one day from a fishing excursion — the only one, we be- 
lieve, since boyhood in which he ever took part, and which 
was, naturally enough, ill fated in its results — he ran across a 
lad with a long string of black bass. He announced his own 
poor luck and asked the reason therefor. " I guess yer didn't 
keep out of sight," was the appropriate answer, which was 
used to explain in the next Sunday's sermon why some min- 
isters made so few converts. At another time, in passing 
through the woods, he noticed two trees which had rubbed 
the one against the other and had then grown together. 
Shortly afterward he was called upon to speak at the Mild- 
may Conference in London. At the end of his address he 
recalled the fact of the crossed trees and used it in the follow- 
ing exquisite and perfect illustration : 

"And now I must close. In the part of New England 
where I spend my summer holidays I have seen a parable of 
nature which, sets forth what I have said. It is an example 
of natural grafting. Two little saplings grew up side by side. 
Through the action of the wind they crossed each other. By 
and by the bark of each became wounded and the sap began 
to mingle until, in some still day, they became united together. 
This process went on more and more, and by and by they 
were firmly compacted. Then the stronger began to absorb 
the life of the weaker. It grew larger and larger, while the 
other grew smaller and smaller, withering and declining till it 
finally dropped away and disappeared. And now there are 
two trunks at the bottom and only one at the top. Death 
has taken away the one ; life has triumphed in the other. 



286 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

"■ There was a time when you and Jesus Christ met. The 
wounds of your penitent heart began to knit up with the 
wounds of his broken heart, and you were united to Christ. 
Where are you now? Are the two lives running parallel, or 
has the word been accomplished in you, ' He must increase, 
but I must decrease'? Has that old life been growing less 
and less and less ? More and more have you been mortifying 
it until at last it seems almost to have disappeared? Blessed 
are you if such is the case. Then can you say, ' I live ; yet not 
I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I now live in 
the flesh I live, not of myself, but by the faith of the Son of 
God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. Henceforth 
for me to live is Christ/ " 

Biography furnished constant illustrations. Now it would 
be the story of Ziska's skin stretched over a drumhead, lead- 
ing the Utraquists to victory ; now the heroic tale of some 
early saint or of some Reformation martyr. We recall the 
thrilling power with which the story of John Coleridge Pat- 
terson's death was used in a missionary meeting in Philadel- 
phia. The isle on the distant horizon, unvisited and unex- 
plored, was first described. Then came the story of the 
departure, the voyage over the still water, the landing, the 
attack upon Patterson, the flight back to the canoe, and the 
return with the dead missionary's body pierced with five 
wounds and covered with palm-leaves. The application of 
the incident followed. This earth, a little isle in the infinite, 
was pictured, and the yearning of the Lord Jesus for its bless- 
ing. He too put out through the seas of space ; he too landed 
on an errand of grace ; he too was rejected and slain ; he too 
was laid away in grave-clothes with five bleeding wounds. 
The stillness was intense as the preacher passed from point to 
point through the whole series of touching correspondences, 
and as he urged the duty of Christians in the task of complet- 
ing the missionary work of the Lord Jesus on earth, as the sue- 



THE PREACHER AND THE PULPIT 287 

cessors of Patterson on the lonely Melanesian isle had finished 
his. 

With this power of illustration went along an extraordi- 
nary scripturalness. His mind had become saturated with 
biblical phraseology by the long years of patient meditation on 
the Word. He held the Bible, so to speak, in solution; he 
was completely assimilated to it in word and in thought. 
His illustrative gifts were to him as a second language by 
which he could interpret his meaning at will. His skill at 
translation back and forth from the vernacular to the Scripture 
equivalent gave him the power of a third tongue. Thus he 
was trilingual in his exposition, using, as it might happen, his 
own vigorous Saxon dialect, the mellow diction of the Bible 
saturated with tender associations, or the picturesque idiom of 
illustrative anecdote. 

In the pages which follow there are collected a few fine and 
pregnant characterizations and some quaintly apposite illustra- 
tions, together with a number of examples of beautifully discrim- 
inating exposition. Perhaps in years to come these and many 
which have appeared elsewhere will be referred to and quoted 
as the Puritan divines of former days were quoted by him. 

" ' Ye became followers of us and of the Lord. 1 Not of us 
alone, but of us and of the Lord. We are to imitate good 
men, but all the time we must look beyond them to the Lord 
himself. If you examine a school-boy's copy-book you will 
find that the writing grows worse and worse as you go down 
the page. Why? Because in the first line he looked only at 
the master's copy. Ever after that he looked more or less at 
his own reproduction of it. Look at human models, but fol- 
low them ever back to the divine original. Christ's example 
stands at the head of the page ; all that comes after is more or 
less imperfect. Let us look to it, therefore, diligently, lest, by our 
faulty example, we become dissenters from our own creed." 



288 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

11 In the order of divine providence, the Lord needs the 
action of our will just as much as we need the action of his 
will. In the old-fashioned watch there are the mainspring and 
the hair-spring. The hair-spring does not move the main- 
spring, but is moved by it ; and yet the mainspring depends 
on the hair-spring to take off the power that was stored up in 
it. By tick after tick of this little spring the motion that was 
coiled up in the great central spring is released and communi- 
cated to the machinery. So we say our will does not move 
God's will ; it is moved by it. At the same time God's will is 
dependent on the submission and choice of our will in order 
that he may bless us and give us the things that we need." 

" It costs our government just as much to uniform a well- 
dressed recruit as it does a ragged one. In either case the 
recruit must put off his citizen's dress and put on the army 
blue ; and so it is not worth while for a volunteer to spend his 
labor and pains to get a new suit to enlist in. There is like- 
wise no necessity for a sinner's waiting to get a better moral 
garb, a more respectable wardrobe of frames and feelings, be- 
fore he may come to Christ. ,, 

" I saw a sign-painter take a dish of gold-dust and pour it 
over the board upon which he was working ; but when he 
turned the board over all of it seemed to slide off. But no, 
not all ; the lines where his brush had been drawn a few mo- 
ments before with the adhesive preparation, these caught the 
glittering particles and held them firm. So, thought I, must 
the teachers of God now do. They must pour the golden 
sand of the gospel over the whole congregation; and if it 
seems to slide off and get no hold upon their hearts, they 
must know that many a one who has been touched with the 
preparing grace of the Holy Spirit will catch and hold fast the 
Word of life, and so the Word shall not return to God void." 



THE TREACHER AND THE TULTIT 289 

" The audacity of unbelief is the secret of its attractiveness 
to many minds. The act of walking on a rope stretched over 
Niagara does not differ materially, as a physical performance, 
from that of walking on a brick pavement ; yet the latter is so 
sober and common an act that it attracts no attention, while 
the former from its very peril and hardihood will draw hun- 
dreds to witness it. And so the feats of those who walk on 
the perilous edge of truth, the ventures of those who play 
with falsehood and hang suspended over the vortex of unbe- 
lief, with just sufficient hold on faith to keep them from falling 
in, are always vastly more diverting than the proceedings of 
those who pursue an orderly and even way of truth and ortho- 
doxy." 

" Some people seem to think that if they can pack the gos- 
pel away into a sound and orthodox creed it is perfectly safe. 
It is a sort of canned fruit of Christianity, hermetically sealed 
and correctly labeled, which will keep for years without decay. 
An extravagant reliance has been placed, therefore, on con- 
fessions of faith as the preservatives of a pure gospel. But 
the heart is greater than the creed ; and if the heart is wrong 
it will very soon corrupt the creed and interline it with its own 
heresies. Hence the wise injunction of the apostle, ' Holding 
the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience? " 

" It is a sad fact that evil is far more infectious than good. 
Disease is contagious ; health is not. If an invalid could only 
catch the robust healthfulness of the one who sits next him in 
the street-car as readily as a well man catches the cholera or 
the smallpox from his traveling companion, what a happy cir- 
cumstance it would be! Instead of quarantines for isolating 
disease we should have hospitals for propagating health. We 
should vaccinate men with the contagion of sound lungs and 
pure blood. But alas ! while it is very easy for evil commu- 



290 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

nications to corrupt good manners, it is very difficult for good 
communications to correct bad manners. Puritan Manton 
says, ' Ears of corn do not catch our clothes and hang about 
them, but thorns and burs do.' Very true. And how the 
burs of avarice and the thorns of worldliness catch upon the 
garments of the church as she passes along Therefore it is 
necessary that we should pick off these burs every night when 
we come home from walking through this present evil world. 
Be sure it is not the function of the pulpit to paint these burs 
so that they shall look like roses, to blunt these thorns so that 
they shall cease to wound the conscience." 

" When you carry a manuscript to the printer for him to 
put into type, he says to you, ' In a few days I will send 
you a proof/ He makes the proof by laying a sheet of paper 
on his types and taking an impression of them. Now the or- 
dinances are proofs of Christ, the facsimile of the death and 
resurrection ; and creeds are proofs of Christ, the duplicate 
copy, if they are correct, of his Word and doctrine." 

11 Experimental religion, as it used to be called, has an im- 
mense advantage over philosophical and sacramental religion 
at this point. One can go into court on an experience, but 
who cares to hear one swear on a syllogism or a tradition? 
To have come into direct personal contact with Christ in re- 
generation enables believers to say, with John, ' that which we 
have looked upon and our hands have handled of the Word 
of life.' Unanswerable confession. That which we have 
handled with our hands is very warm and vital ; that which 
has been handed to us by priestly hands gets strangely cooled 
and devitalized in coming through the long reaches of tactual 
succession. We have a living Christ made ever present to us 
through the Holy Spirit ; and we cannot afford to receive our 
grace through lessened and circuitous channels when such pro- 



THE PREACHER AND THE PULPIT 291 

vision has been made for obtaining it immediately by the touch 
of a personal and appropriating faith. The Chinese worshiper, 
in praying to his ancestors, believes that if he makes known 
his petition to his dead father, and he in turn to his father till 
the remotest ancestor is reached, the latter will hand it over 
to God, This, it will be perceived, is sacerdotalism with the 
current reversed. Poor Chinaman! Poor sacramentarian ! 
How faint the echo of those intercessions, how feeble the 
impact of that grace, which has come through such inter- 
minable routes!" 

" Pascal says very beautifully, ' Jesus let only his wounds 
be touched after his resurrection. Hereby I perceive that we 
can now be united to Christ only through his sufferings.' 
Yes ; now only through his atonement which those sufferings 
have purchased. It is not the life of Christ lived before the 
crucifixion by which we are to be saved, but the life of the 
risen and glorified Christ. ' Henceforth I know no man after 
the flesh/ says Paul : [ yea, though I have known Christ after 
the flesh, yet now I know him no more/ Many to-day are 
trying to imitate the earthly life of Christ; many others are 
trying to be saved by imitating the death of Christ. The 
world is pretty nearly divided between these two classes, those 
who are seeking salvation by copying Christ's life, and those 
who are seeking salvation by copying his death, the one look- 
ing for peace by self-morality and the other by self-mortifica- 
tion. One of our missionaries relates the terrible suffering of 
a heathen whom he found. So many years he had lived with 
his body immersed in water ; so many years he had swung on 
hooks piercing through his flesh— a horrible record of studied 
barbarities inflicted on the body. He was simply trying to 
make peace with God through his wounds. Here, in this little 
meeting of the disciples, is the most significant answer to such 
blind yearnings of our poor humanity — the risen Lord stand- 



292 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

ing before the world and saying, ' Peace be unto you/ and 
then showing the wounds in his body by which he has pur- 
chased that peace. No longer are we called to make peace 
with God, since the Scriptures declare that Christ has made 
peace by his cross. The gospel which we preach now to the 
world is not Make peace] but ' Take peace? . . . Choirs of 
angels — all the orchestra of heaven — singing, ' Peace on earth, 
good will to men,' are nothing compared with this little sermon 
within the closed doors. 'Peace be unto you'; 'and when 
he had so said he showed them his hands and his side.' Here 
was the handwriting of redemption deeply engraved in his 
flesh ; here was the title-deed of pardon written in his risen 
body. The wounds of Christ are an eternal and unanswerable 
reply to all accusations of conscience. 

" We are aware, however, that men will not look to Christ's 
wounds for healing until their hearts have been wounded for 
sin. This, then, is the first requisite— that our hearts be 
melted for our sins. We say melted. David said, ' A broken 
and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.' The law 
of God by the hammer of affliction or by the smitings of judg- 
ment may break the heart. But broken ice is just as cold as 
solid ice. And we have seen worldly hearts all shattered and 
bruised to pieces by calamity, yet remaining as frigid as an 
iceberg. We do not undervalue law work in preaching, but 
oh! it is grace work that melts. And the wounds of Christ 
are just as powerful to melt the heart as to heal it." 

" What a solemn expression is this, ' Making the cross of 
Christ of none effect ' ! No power or might of man can sweep 
the stars from the sky or blot the sun from the heavens or 
efface the splendid landscape ; but one wound in the eye can 
destroy the sight and make all those things as though they 
were not. So the atonement of Christ can never pass into 
eclipse or cease to be a fact ; but there is such a thing as the 



THE PREACHER AND THE PULPIT 293 

eclipse of faith— unbelief filming the soul so that the cross and 
atonement of Christ shall become a great blank — vacant, life- 
less, meaningless. O eyes that are becoming dim, but not 
with age ; blinded, but not with tears ; hard of seeing, but not 
with use — hear the Lord speaking from heaven, 'Anoint thine 
eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see.' It is not that God 
has need to do greater things for us, but that we should open 
our eyes and see what he has done." 

" I have been struck in observing the various attempts to 
explain a certain phrase that Paul uses— 'In all these things 
we are more than conquerors.' Yet how simple it is when 
taken in its connection. He sums up all the things he is en- 
during — the sword, peril, nakedness, dying all the day long 
for Christ, led daily like a sheep to the slaughter; and then 
he says, 'In all these things we are more than conquerors.' 
How? Plainly thus. The man who is victorious through 
victory is a conqueror ; but he who is victorious through de- 
feat is more than conqueror." 

" Many persons prefer not to know their whole duty lest 
they should be obliged to do it. We read the other day of a 
rich miser who was afflicted with cataracts on both his eyes. 
He applied to an eminent surgeon to remove them, and after 
examination was told that it could be done. ' But what will 
it cost? ' was his anxious question. ' One hundred dollars for 
each eye,' was the answer. The miser thought of his money 
and then thought of his blindness, and said, ' I will have one 
eye restored ; that will be enough to enable me to see to count 
my money, and I can save the expense of having the other 
operated on.' ' O Lord, open thou mine eyes, that I may be- 
hold wondrous things out of thy law,' cries the true Christian. 
But the half-and-half Christian wants only one eye opened. 
He likes to have the minister preach conversion strongly, be- 



294 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

cause he has been converted himself and believes in it ; but he 
does not like to have him preach consecration, for that implies 
laying himself and all his wealth on God's altar, and he is not 
ready for that. In other words, he deliberately chooses a one- 
eyed religion— that which sees Christ as Saviour but ignores 
him as sanctifier. But is Christ divided? Can we halve him 
by our partial faith, so that he can be our Saviour who delivers 
us from the penalty of our sins, and not be our Master who 
commands our obedience? We do not think so. We can- 
not be saved without Christ's cross, and we cannot be sancti- 
fied and made meet for the kingdom of heaven without our 
own cross. ' Except a man take up his cross daily, and fol- 
low after me, he cannot be my disciple.' To begin to be a 
Christian is an easy thing, but to be a Christian, in all the 
length and breadth of meaning involved in that word, this 
costs a battle— a battle with self, a battle with sin, a battle 
with the world, a battle with the evil one." 

In a gracious article on " The Names of Scripture " he says : 
" None will have their names stricken off because of their 
waywardness and wanderings. On the contrary, these will be 
the oftener mentioned, as the straying sheep hears its name 
called more frequently than the one which keeps close to the 
flock. Did you ever think to listen and hear Jesus, the Good 
Shepherd, call his sheep by their names? 'Simon, Simon, 
behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift 
you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee.* 'Martha, 
Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: 
but one thing is needful.' ' Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou 
me?'" 

" Speech is that which especially reveals the flavor or quality 
of the man. It may sometimes feign sanctity, to be sure, 
when it is wanting in the life ; and it may seek to make itself 



THE PREACHER AND THE PULPIT 295 

redolent with a borrowed grace, as the tippler disguises his 
breath with spices and perfumes ; but the illusion cannot be 
long maintained. 'Thy speech bewrayeth thee,' is a saying 
of universal application. One cannot live sinfully and talk 
holily, live impurely and talk cleanly, live selfishly and talk 
generously. ' Show me your tongue/ says the doctor, as the 
first demand of the patient. Here is the most favorable point 
for a diagnosis. And the truest diagnosis of the soul can be 
made in the same way by examining the tongue to see what 
kind of a deposit and coloring the thoughts and desires have 
left there. Therefore, of those who are constituted the salt of 
the earth we are not surprised to find the requirements made, 
' Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt.* 
Well shall we mark the words. We are not told to let our 
speech be salt entirely, totally. To take a whole mouthful of 
salt will choke one and turn his stomach. We may in spiritual 
things disgust and repel men by a too raw and excessive and 
unmixed use of religious conversation. A pious but very re- 
fined and sensitive minister recently declared that the greatest 
provocation to anger and intemperate speech that he had ever 
encountered was in the conduct of a rough and boisterous 
Christian, who used to shout at him across the street or in the 
cars or wherever he chanced to meet him, 'Well, brother, 
how's your soul? ' It was difficult, no doubt, for him always 
to answer the salutation with grace ; and the reason is obvious. 
This man's speech was not delicately seasoned with salt, and 
so was nauseous and intolerable when it might, if fitly seasoned, 
have proved refreshing. It is a great art to temper one's 
Christian conversation exactly to the occasion." 

" The life of Jesus gave us the inspiration of example ; the 
cross of Jesus kindled the inspiration of love ; the resurrection 
of Jesus begot the inspiration of hope ; but the ascension of 
Jesus gave the inspiration of direct power." 



296 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

" ' Blessed be the Lord God of Israel ; for he hath visited 
and redeemed his people/ is a significant note in the prophecy 
of his birth. Four times in the gospels is our Lord's advent 
to earth spoken of as a visit. But it was a visit which never 
for a moment looked toward a permanent abiding. At his 
birth he was laid in a borrowed manger ; at his burial he was 
laid in a borrowed tomb because he owned no foot of earth ; 
and between the cradle and the grave was a sojourn in which 
the Son of man had not where to lay his head. The mountain- 
top whither he constantly withdrew to commune with his 
Father was the nearest to his home. And hence there is a 
strange, pathetic meaning in that saying, 'And every one 
went to his own house. Jesus went into the Mount of 01ives. , " 

" Covering sin is allowable if only the sin is another's, not 
ours. ' He that covereth his sins shall not prosper/ but 
' Charity covereth a multitude of sins/ the faults and flaws 
and imperfections of others." 

" Many have been the kinds of bread that have been de- 
vised to meet the cravings of the perverted appetites which 
everywhere prevail. Bread of intellect and bread of imagina- 
tion ; bread of art and culture, and bread of doubt and denial ; 
bread half baked in which gospel and science, faith and phi- 
losophy, have been kneaded together in an impossible mixture ; 
and poisoned bread, which is the sheerest infidelity, sent forth 
with the stamp of some pulpit on it. Of the two things which 
are distressing to look upon to-day, one knows not which is 
the more distressing, the great multitude which cares nothing 
for the bread of life, or the other multitude which feeds on the 
bread of death and is satisfied with it." 

"The uplifted gaze without the outstretched hands tends 
to make one visionary ; the outstretched hands without the 
upward look tend to make one weary." 



THE PREACHER AND THE PULPIT 297 

" It is not the fleshly heart alone that has a right ventricle 
and a left ventricle. The spiritual heart is divided in the 
same way, and the great majority of Christians assign one 
compartment of the heart to self, and leave the other side to 
Christ. That is half-heartedness in service." 

" Persecution, indeed, like everything else which the Lord 
has blessed and sanctified, has been counterfeited by his great 
enemy. Many a man who glories in tribulation is really glory- 
ing in his own shame, his fancied crown of martyrdom being 
only a fool's cap which signalizes his preeminent self-deception. 
The ritualist setting up in the church his half-heathen ceremo- 
nials, and complaining of the discipline that sets him aside 
from the ministry ; the rationalist crucifying the faith of Christ 
with the nails of his unsanctified logic, and then, because 
God's true servants hold off from him, counting it persecution 
— what have these to do with wearing the crown of Christ's 
rejection? " 

" Never shall I forget a scene which I witnessed in yonder 
cemetery. There was one solitary mourner bearing an only 
child to burial. I stood by his side and offered the last prayer, 
and then he shut the lid of the casket and locked it, and, put- 
ting the key into his pocket, turned away. Instantly I seemed 
to hear from the garden of God, where Jesus is, the words, 
'Why weepest thou? Fear not; for I am he that liveth and 
was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and have the 
keys of death and of the grave.' That father could turn the 
key that shut in his child, but not the key that opened the 
door back to life ; but Jesus has the key that openeth." 



CHAPTER XXII 

ERRANT MAN AND THE INERRANT BOOK 

Dr. Gordon's theology — The Bible and inspiration — Estimate of human 

nature 

THE text was for Dr. Gordon not the winding horn of the 
chase to signal the start across the moors of rhetoric and 
through the tangled woods of theology ; rather was it the inscrip- 
tion above an entrance opening into the Word of God. Scrip- 
ture he compared to the dissected map. To find the complete 
statement of truth it is needful to hunt through chapter after 
chapter, book after book, and to combine the scattered parts. 
The concordance, he said, is, after all, the best commentary. 
" In Scripture single words, like blazed trees in a forest, are 
sure guides through the labyrinth of revelation. ' Lamb,' 
1 blood,' ' faith/ ' forgiveness/ ' peace '—these are God's words ; 
and whoever will take one of them and trace it through the 
Bible, threading together on this single word, as on a cord, the 
various texts where it occurs, will find both a wondrous con- 
tinuity and a wondrous unity thereby established." 

It is hardly necessary to say that to the Bible he accorded 
a place of solitary and unapproachable preeminence. With 
those who stand ready to degrade it to the ranks, stripping 
from it the sword of the Spirit, and sending it down to march 
with Shakespeare, Plato, and the raw conscripts of heart and 
brain, he never argued. The sensitized film photographs 
more than the eye can detect. The prepared heart sees more 
than the acutest critic. " There is a finer sense than the scien- 

298 






ERRANT MAN AND THE INERRANT BOOK 299 

tific, a more delicate touch than the exegetical. It is written, 
and cannot be altered, 'The natural man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him : 
neither can he know them, because they are spiritually dis- 
cerned. ' The Bible repeatedly suffers violence, and the violent 
seek to take it by force. But the Holy Spirit alone holds the 
key to it. He only knows the combination of faith and study 
by which it can be unlocked, and all its hidden treasures of 
wisdom and knowledge appropriated.' ' 

As to modern Old Testament criticism, he doubtless felt, as 
do many others, that, though it may be as scientific as paleontol- 
ogy, it is also as lifeless and as dry. He thought it a new 
scholasticism as wearisome as that of Aquinas or of Duns 
Scotus, as far removed, too, from the method of Jesus. On 
the other hand, he was not ready to make a casus belli of 
theories concerning " priestly writers" and "redactors." The 
time is short. Speculation soon dies out if not fed with the 
oil of controversy. Fruitfulness is more important than an 
abstract accuracy. The way of light is not paved with lexi- 
cons, but with self-denials and faithful testimonies. He shut 
the door behind him, therefore, leaving the sanhedrim of 
critics and conservatives to wrangle and bicker, and passed 
out into the world of the needy and the sorrowing. " ' Take 
and eat in simplicity the bread as you have it before you,' " 
he said, quoting Bengel, " ' and be not disturbed if you find 
in it now and then a grit of the millstone.' In reading some 
of the lucubrations of the higher criticism, it seems as though 
it had deliberately selected the grit and ignored the grain. 
Let such as like this way grind their teeth on biblical criti- 
cism ; but such as prefer food to fault-finding will eat the grain 
of the Word." 

And again : " Upon the much-mooted question of ' inerrancy ' 
we do not presume to enter. But we do express the wish 
that our higher critics were as ready to test their own iner- 



300 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

rancy by Scripture as to test the Scripture's inerrancy by their 
own. 

" We can conceive of nothing better than Bengel's rule for 
searching the Word of God with profit : ' Te totum applied ad 
textum; rem totam appliea ad te? (' Apply thyself wholly to 
the text ; apply the subject wholly to thyself.') Subjective 
criticism was never so urgently needed as now ; and we might 
even copy with profit the example of some of our Puritan 
fathers, who used to spend hours on their knees before the 
open Bible, praying, ' Search me, O God, and know my heart : 
try me, and know my thoughts : and see if there be any wicked 
way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.' 

"On the contrary, has not the te totum application to the 
text of Scripture been vastly overdone in our day? 'Truly 
light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold 
the sun,' and unquestionably very useful scientific ends are 
promoted by the spectroscope, which unbraids the sunbeams, 
assorts their rays, and assigns them to their various sources. 
But this is not the process which makes the flowers grow, and 
the grain ripen, and the orchards bring forth their fruit. Many 
who are engaged in practical Christian work believe that the 
principal use of Scripture is for regeneration and spiritual nu- 
trition ; that its words are ' spirit and life,' and as such are as 
certain, if received and cherished in the heart, to produce trans- 
formed and holy characters as the wheat grain to beget the 
wheat harvest. Why not occupy ourselves, therefore, prin- 
cipally with sowing the seed of the Word broadcast among 
men? And as to our personal use of Scripture, is it not bet- 
ter that we use the Bible as a search-light for illuminating our 
understanding than to use our understanding as a search-warrant 
for discovering whether some error or contradiction may not be 
hiding in the nooks and crannies of its history or chronology? 

"An errant Bible is exactly what is demanded by errant 
youth. To a 'man beholding his natural face in the glass' 



ERRANT MAN AND THE INERRANT BOOK 301 

of Scripture it is a vast relief to be assured, on scientific au- 
thority, that the glass is perchance considerably convexed, so 
that the sinful self seen therein, which has often been so trouble- 
some, after all, may have been greatly exaggerated. Our plea 
is not, however, for war on the critics, but for watch over our- 
selves — that we let no day pass in the new year in which we do 
not turn the light of Scripture upon our lives, subject our hearts 
to its searching inquisition, and rejoice to be found out by it con- 
cerning those sins of which we have been willingly ignorant." 

This reverential regard for the Bible pervaded his whole 
teaching and gave to his theological opinions an anchorage in 
days of drift and uncertainty. We remember reading in a 
Boston newspaper a report of one of his sermons made by a 
young woman from the Harvard Annex, who prefaced her 
column with a brief description of the church and of its pas- 
tor. Her remarks on the well-filled house and hearty congre- 
gational worship were appreciative and commendatory. Of 
the sermon she observed that one could scarce have believed 
that any progress had been made in theology since the days 
of Jonathan Edwards if the words of the speaker could be 
used as a test. Ah well! what she heard there was truly 
older than Edwards, older than Calvin, older than Augustine, 
older even than Paul. It came from the heart of Jesus him- 
self. " Back to Christ," was the cry and aim of the preacher. 
The soul of man was to him not a common inn for nondescript 
and vagrant theories, but a home for the perpetual residence 
of God's Spirit. In "progressive theology," therefore, he took 
little interest. " ' Advanced thought/ " he used to say, " is very 
aptly characterized by the Revised Version: 'He that goeth 
on and abideth not in the truth is not of God. 7 We can go 
on and outstrip the Word of God, but such advances are at 
our peril. Almost better lag behind the truth than outrun it. 
Best of all is it to walk in the truth." 

The common term of opprobrium with which opinions of 



302 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

this sort are stigmatized in Boston is " narrowness." " Broad " 
and " narrow" are at best vaguely relative terms, and ordina- 
rily mere ungracious epithets bandied by partizans. For it 
should be marked that the test of " liberalism " is as purely 
personal as that of heresy in the middle ages. If you agree 
with me you are " broad " ; if not, " narrow." Properly used, 
however, these adjectives concern not belief, but temper, 
animus, and manner of presentation. Thus most of us would 
agree that the man who wrote the thirteenth of First Corin- 
thians, " that paean to charity," was more of a liberal, spite of 
his Calvinism, than many who bear the name. The honest, 
just, and pertinent characterizations of doctrine are not 
"broad" and "narrow," but "true" and "false." So we 
have "broad" men advocating false doctrine and "narrow" 
men maintaining the truth. Now, while exception might be 
freely taken to the interpretation of Christianity set forth 
weekly from the pulpit of the Clarendon Street Church, of the 
courtesy of the preacher, the generosity, the liberalism (in its 
uncorrupted sense), there could be no question. " It is," con- 
fessed one of his opponents, " more of a delight to me to hear 
Dr. Gordon speak what is not according to my mind than to 
listen to any other man discourse on that which I like and 
agree with." 

Gordon himself would have said that the test by which the 
truth or falsity of his opinions was to be determined was that 
of scripturalness or unscripturalness. The test of experience 
and of history, however, in all important particulars reinforces 
the teaching of the New Testament. The axiom with which 
he started was the corruption of man and the hopelessness of 
all attempts at self-recovery. The human heart is, in his opin- 
ion, an incorrigible recidivist. Its fallings are incessant. It is 
at ever-recurring intervals remanded by the judge, conscience, 
to the punishment of remorse, to the lonely cell of despair. 
Men without Christ are, as the contagion-smitten crews on 



ERRANT MAN AND THE INERRANT BOOK 303 

those Baltic vessels in the days of the black death, dead, 
dying, drifting. In themselves there is no hope, no salvation, 
no escape. 

"The simple fact is," he writes, "that we are in a fallen 
condition by nature ; yes, worse than fallen, we are in a bur- 
dened condition. We bear the weight of inherited transgres- 
sion in our bodies and souls. Every man carries his father 
and his grandfather on his back. People sneer at the doc- 
trine of original sin, but let them look at the facts of human 
life and be silent. Hawthorne in his ' Note-book,' published 
after his death, says, ' I have been reading Bunyan's " Pilgrim's 
Progress." What a strange figure Christian cuts, going through 
the country with the burden on his back ! I wonder what he 
has in his pack?' Had the great novelist no dealings with 
his own conscience that he should ask such a question? Had 
he had no observation of human life not to mark how men 
come into the world weighted down with hereditary tendencies 
toward wrong-doing, under which they stagger to the grave?" 

This doctrine of the exceeding sinfulness of man is the pons 
asinorum of both theology and experience. It is the one cer- 
tainty of which it is allowable to speak with dogmatic positive- 
ness. To say that " men are by nature and from the begin- 
ning sons of God," that " there is nothing in Christianity which 
has not its roots in human nature," and that "reverence for 
our own human nature is the only salvation from brutal vice 
and every false belief," is to declare one's self unsophisticated, 
unaccountably blind, a prophet, if not of the deceit of one's 
heart, at least of the sightlessness of one's eyes.* In the " era 

* How can men preach thus? Probably because their minds dwell 
upon the convergence of worldly Christians and respectable worldlings 
into one group, where classification is as difficult as of those diatoms and 
desmids which scientists at one time declare vegetation and at another 
animal life, There is no mistaking a milch cow for a beech-tree, however. 
Neither should there be any difficulty in discriminating between unspeak- 
able Turks and ineffable saints. They cannot both be " sons of God." 



304 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

of good feeling " in which Gordon lived the distinctions be- 
tween good and bad, the regenerate and the sullenly and ob- 
stinately evil, were commonly slighted. The world was declared 
to be growing hourly better, the flesh proclaimed to be in no 
need of renovation, and the devil ridiculed as a figment of the 
imagination vanishing at the cock-crowing of science. " Ruin 
and redemption," he was wont to say, " are the two poles of 
evangelical theology ; but it cannot be denied that to-day and 
in Boston orthodoxy is at both poles considerably flattened.'' 
The sentimental theory of " universal sonship " was mingled 
with the teaching of Jesus, as santonin powder is mixed with 
food, resulting in a strange color-blindness which made the 
whole earth appear beautifully but falsely rose-hued. In this 
Pelagian teaching, as Amiel says, "the specifically Christian 
accent is lost. Christianity becomes a religion of dignity, not 
of humility. Penitence, the struggles of weakness, find no 
place in it. Holiness and mysticism evaporate, the law is 
effaced, and faith is made a poor, dull thing."* 

" Life is deeper than faith, and death is deeper than denial. 
Heterodoxy, generally speaking, is simply spiritual death trans- 
lated into a creed. If the men who are now promoting the 
new theology — a counter-reformation destined to bury every 
church it touches in helpless spiritual death — had been engaged 
for years in the hand-to-hand labor of bringing the uncon- 
verted to Christ, we believe that such a movement would have 
been impossible." So Gordon wrote of those martyrs "of the 
chair," the Andover professors, in the days of the Andover 
controversy. It was doubtless his work among outcasts and 
drunkards which saved him from the incorrigible optimism in 
regard to man's nature current, and which enabled him to 
preach Christ crucified with such steadfastness and tenderness. 
The following extracts illustrate his evangelicism and exemplify 
the fervor and power of its presentation : 

* u Journal Intime," p. 115. 



ERRANT MAN AND THE INERRANT BOOK 305 

" Liberalism is the religion of human nature. It does not 
make stern and rigid claims on men. It does not hold them 
up to strong convictions on such subjects as sin and retribu- 
tion and the need of regeneration. Hence when men get care- 
less and easy-going in their opinions they drift into what is 
called liberalism as inevitably as water runs downhill. You 
never find men backsliding into orthodoxy; you never find 
men drifting into high Calvinism ; and you never will till you 
find water running uphill and iron floating upward in the air. 
On the contrary, one has to climb to get into this kind of faith, 
trampling on pride and self-esteem, and holding himself rigidly 
up to that conviction which is hardest to receive, that human 
nature is naturally depraved and needs regeneration, and that 
God is righteously holy and must punish sin. If one gets tired 
of believing this he has only to shut his eyes and slide, and by 
the simple gravitation of human nature he lands among the 
liberals as certainly as a stone loosed from the mountain-side 
lands in the valley." 

" We have sometimes turned up a flat stone in a field just to 
see the nameless brood of hideous insects that would be found 
there, and to see them rushing in every direction to hide them- 
selves from the sun that was poured in upon them. So if the 
shield of respectability were suddenly removed, if the sanction 
of false custom were lifted, if human palliations and excuses 
were for a moment taken away, and our hearts were left naked 
and open before him w T ith whom we have to do, what a hurry- 
ing and hiding there would be from the face of him that sit- 
teth on the throne! what a shrinking away of secret sins — 
of enmity and jealousy and falsehood and impurity! So in 
these days of shallow theology there is nothing so needful as 
that we should have times of thorough self-examination in 
which we should try to see the worst there is in us. We ought 
now and then to take out a search-warrant for our own hearts, 



SOb ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

and, when we find what evil there is in us, to say, ' Strike, 
Lord, for I deserve the worst. I will not evade, I will not 
palliate, I will not contend ; I will bear the indignation of the 
Lord, because I have sinned against him.' " 

" One can no more compel his heart to love that to which 
he is disinclined than he can change the law of gravitation so 
that it shall lift him up instead of holding him down. But if 
you have a new heart the law of your spiritual gravitation 
will be changed so that you will be attracted heavenward in- 
stead of earthward. ' Be of good cheer : I have overcome 
the world/ says Jesus. But why should I be of good cheer 
on that account? If the world has overcome me so that I 
lie bruised and bleeding beneath its feet, it is no comfort for 
another to say to me, ' Be of good courage ; for though you 
have fallen, I stand upright ; and though you have been de- 
feated by sin, I have conquered sin.' It would only deepen 
my chagrin and discouragement instead of giving new courage. 
But in the Epistle of John we have a text which supplements 
this: 'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even 
our faith.' Does this mean that having faith in yourself en- 
ables you to overcome the world? No. And yet this is all 
the gospel that many have for the helpless sinner. They 
would go to the poor victim of lust and intemperance, who 
lies utterly defeated and despairing, and who cries, ' Oh that 
I could get away from myself, for I am my own worst enemy/ 
and they would say to him, ' Have faith in yourself.' As 
well tell a drowning man to lay hold of his right hand in order 
to rescue himself when both the right hand and the left belong 
to the same sinking body. No! 'this is the victory that over- 
cometh the world, even our faith' — the faith that fastens to 
Christ, the great overcomer for us, and appropriates his victory 
and makes it our own." 



ERRANT MAN AND THE INERRANT BOOK 307 

" I go into my garden after a terrific storm and find that 
my grape-vine, which for years had climbed into the sunlight 
and basked in its beams, has fallen down, its leaves all torn 
and its boughs bespattered with mud. And I begin to talk 
to my vine : ' vine, thou needest to be pruned and enriched. 
I must pour ashes about thy roots and pour water above thee 
to cause thee to revive, and then thou wilt lift thyself into 
the light and warmth. 7 Then I do my best at pruning and 
enriching, but each day as I walk into my garden I see the 
vine lying there. It stretches up its tendrils, indeed, like sup- 
plicating fingers to the sky; but because it can find nothing 
upon which to lay hold it still creeps on the ground. 

" Suppose, instead of talking any more to my vine, I build 
a trellis upon which it can lift itself up to the sunlight? Ah, 
that is Christ's method. He casts a glance of pity upon us 
and says, not simply, ' I am from above ; ye are from beneath. 
No man can come to me except the Father draw him ; ' but 
listen : ' I have loved thee with an everlasting love : therefore 
with loving-kindness have I drawn thee/ says Jehovah. But 
how, O Father? ' I have drawn thee with the cords of love, 
and with the bands of a man.' But what love and what man? 
I will tell you. ' This is my beloved Son ; hear ye him,' and 
the Son says, ' I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.' 
The cross is the divine trellis for lifting men's affections to 
God. The heart that was striving in vain to love the Father, 
and was only falling back to earth beaten and baffled after 
each effort, finds at last its firm support. ' The preaching of 
the cross is to them that perish, foolishness ; but unto us which 
are saved, it is the power of God.' " 

" ' If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye 
have received, let him be accursed! This makes very serious 
business of the ministry — serious in view of the fact that we 



3 o8 



ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 



have no more choice as to what kind of gospel we will preach 
than as to what kind of money we will use to pay our debts. 
There never was a time when ' another gospel ' had such free 
course and was so glorified among us as now. It is not so 
much open infidelity as fictitious Christianity that we have to 
fear— a gospel which uses all the phrases and exercises all the 
seeming fervors of the true faith, but is as unlike it as lead is 
to gold. Indeed, I may say that to-day liberalism has, for 
the most part, left off contending and taken up counterfeiting. 
One of the most artful methods of issuing spurious currency 
is to take a gold coin, bore into it and dig out the great bulk 
of the gold, and then fill up the cavity with lead. The face 
of the coin remains intact, but the heart has been hollowed 
out. 

11 So the most dangerous theology in circulation among us 
to-day is an evangelicalism which keeps most of the phrases 
of orthodoxy, and yet is utterly void of the vital substance 
thereof. 'Atonement! Yes, indeed/ says this other gospel. 
'Jesus Christ is the martyr-man of the race, one in whom the 
enthusiasm of humanity kindled to such intensity that it con- 
sumed the heart from which it proceeded, giving the most 
splendid example of self-sacrifice which the world has ever 
seen. Not that in his death he bore the curse of a violated 
law ! Such an idea spoils the poetry and pathos of his martyr- 
dom, needlessly embarrassing it with the theology of substitu- 
tion and vicarious satisfaction for human guilt, thereby keep- 
ing alive the old " offense of the cross." Divinity of Christ! 
Yes ; with all the heart let it be believed ; and since by his 
incarnation Christ became our kinsman according to the flesh, 
let us rejoice in "the essential divinity of human nature" also.' 
Thus, whereas in a former generation the contention was for 
bringing Christ down to the level of our common humanity, 
now it is for lifting up our common humanity to the level of 
Christ. And so is brought in that most deadly doctrine of 






ERRANT MAN AND THE INERRANT BOOK 309 

broad Christianity, that 'all men by nature are sons of God,' a 
doctrine proclaimed among us with such alluring eloquence 
that thousands of uninstructed souls imagine they hear the 
ring of the true gospel coin in what is really only the prolonged 
resonance of an old Pelagian heresy. 

" We fully affirm that this doctrine is not only contradicted 
by all Scripture, but disproved by all human experience. ' As 
many as received him, to them gave he power to become the 
sons of God, even to them that believe on his name : which 
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
will of man, but of God. 1 Here is sonship to God, but it is 
predicated solely on the ground of the new birth, the solemn 
necessity of which, as announced by our Lord, bears witness 
to the depravity, not to the divinity, of human nature. Can 
we brave it out with God, still maintaining in the face of ex- 
plicit Scripture that without repentance and without regenera- 
tion . . . men are the children of God? Such a doctrine 
Milton rightly traces not to Christ, but to the prince of fallen 
angels, whom he makes to say : 

" ' The son of God I am, or was, 
And if I was I am ; relation holds 
All men are sons of God.' " 



CHAPTER XXIII 

EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 

" Progress " — Review of Drummond's " A City without a Church" — The 
coming of Christ— Eschatology — The Roman Antichrist — The resto- 
ration of Israel — The resurrection 

CLOSELY allied to this view of man's moral incompetency 
stands the doctrine of the hopeless inability of the race 
to attain social redemption. The vaunt of " progress " * is but 
the echo of the boast of self-righteousness. Both heresies have 
their common source in the self-esteem of the human heart. 
They are "the counterfeit presentment of two brothers," the 
face and obverse of the same false coin. Those who preach 
the dignity and goodness of man generally minimize the ap- 
palling corruption of society, and explain that tragedy, human 
history, as if it were a pleasant drama proceeding through five 
acts to a delightful denouement. 

This was not Gordon's attitude. He believed that the pres- 
ent age was evil and would remain so unto the end. "Jesus 

* To quote Amiel once more : " The plea justificatory of progress has 
a criterion that is quantitative, that is to say, purely exterior (having regard 
to the wealth of life), and not qualitative (the goodness of life). Always 
the same tendency to take the appearance for the thing, the form for the 
substance, the law for the essence ; always the same absence of moral 
personality, the same obtuseness of conscience, which has never recog- 
nized sin present in the will, which places evil outside of man, moralizes 
from outside, and transforms to its own liking the whole lesson of history." 
(" Journal Intime," p. 60.) 

310 



EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 311 

did not say," he wrote, M ' This is the best world that was ever 
made ; things are growing better and better ; there is ten times 
more happiness than sorrow on the earth. Only live on the 
sunny side of the house and keep your curtains lifted and you 
will be all right.' No such optimistic vaporing as this! But, 
* In the world ye shall have tribulation. Let not your heart 
be troubled. I go to prepare a place for you' — a place of 
deliverance. Ah, that is what we long for— deliverance from 
the world's great crushing machine, with its wheels of war and 
famine and pestilence and earthquake and alcohol grinding 
men to powder by millions every year. To be able to see 
God behind all this satanic discord, and to believe in him spite 
of all this titanic cruelty of the elements, is not always an easy 
thing. . . . Let us not imagine that we are now reigning with 
Christ on earth or that the kingdom of God has been set up 
in the world. The church's earthly career during the present 
age is, like her Lord's, a career of exile rather than of exalta- 
tion, of rejection rather than of rule, of cross-bearing rather 
than of scepter-bearing." 

The permanency and sovereignty of evil during the present 
age was one of his deepest convictions. The poor we have 
with us always, but there are others too— their oppressors, 
and the continuous, unending army of sin. The historical 
orbit of our planet is no more than its astronomical orbit an 
upward spiral. Mankind passes century after century through 
like phases of sin and through the same experiences of moral 
wretchedness. Only he that hangeth the stars on nothing 
and holdeth the earth as a very little thing can and will deflect 
its course finally to higher planes. 

The progress which seems to be making in certain periods 
of the world's history Gordon felt to be external and formal,, 
a mere coating of the surface hiding perilous depths. The 
present age he believed to be an age of election. Its ultimate 
purposes are purely disciplinary. Human society is the earth 



312 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

in which the plant grows. What happens to it is immaterial, 
except in so far as its development is tributary to the church 
of Christ. It may be vastly improved, enriched with the blood 
of a dozen revolutions and a score of liberation wars ; it may 
be weeded of numberless noxious and parasitical growths ; it 
may be cleared of innumerable stones of stumbling and rocks 
of offense. But the great Gardener is thinking not of his plot, 
but of the transcendently beautiful flower, the church of Christ, 
which he is raising on it with tender interest and solicitude. 
Like the Japanese florist, who often spends fifty months on a 
single chrysanthemum bush, he is laying out on it the care 
and nurture of millenniums. The church and the world stand 
in eternal contrast on the pages of the New Testament. Any 
attempt to make the one coterminous with the other will re- 
sult, as in the past, in corrupting the church down to the level 
of the world and in the reduction of its religio-thermal line to 
the cold temperature of secularism. 

That Christianity has modified, in a greater or less degree, 
the world's life, and that it will continue so to do, he of course 
never questioned. " The patient sunbeam brooding over the 
buried seed till it draws out the hidden germ which it contains 
is all the time warming the surrounding atmosphere." But 
this resul is to be considered as entirely subsidiary to the pur- 
poses of God in the present age. " Civilization is not regen- • 
eration. Civilization puts Christianity into the world ; regen- 
eration takes man out of the world. Civilization attempts to . 
diffuse God's life and truth among men ; regeneration separates . 
men unto God. The one process is pervasive ; the other 
elective. The one makes men better citizens of earth; the 
other makes them citizens of heaven. " The blessing which the 
world receives from the church is thus collateral, for the latter 
is not destined in this dispensation to establish its ideals as 
recognized statutes for the control of mankind. Its position 
is to the mass of men now, as ever since the day of the cruci- 



EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 313 

fixion, that of an unwelcome and rejected witness to unappre- 
ciated truth. 

This insistence on the Paulo- Calvinist formula, as opposed to 
what might be called the formula of Rousseau, found expression 
in a criticism of Professor Henry Drummond's " A City with- 
out a Church," so cogent, so just, and so scriptural withal that 
we cannot refrain from quoting it at length. It is an admira- 
ble reply to those who are so taken up with social programs 
as to forget the program of the ages and the promise of Christ's 
appearing, and who, like our first parents in Blanco White's 
sonnet, are, in their keen interest in grasshopper, tree, and leaf 
which the sun reveals, wholly unconscious of the starry pos- 
sibilities which it conceals. 

"The theology of the Broad Church is emphatically an 
Elysian theology, at whose fountains those who have been 
embittered by the rigorous teaching of the former or Puritan 
age drink and forget their sorrows. Its preaching is as idyllic 
as that was dogmatic ; and, so far from any suspicion of a 
paradise lost, it constantly assures us that, if man ever fell at 
all, he must have fallen upward, judging by his present goodly 
estate. 

" Now we are not called to choose between optimism and 
pessimism in religion. The mischief comes of just this choos- 
ing; the magnifying of the hopeful elements in Christianity 
and in common life, to the utter ignoring of the dark and 
dreadful facts, and vice versa. Indeed, some one has re- 
minded us that, etymologically, heresy signifies a dividing or 
choosing — the selecting of one extreme of Christian truth to 
the utter ignoring of the other extreme. And one need only 
glance through the history of dogma to observe how many 
of the great heresies have been exaggerated half-truths instead 
of absolute falsehoods. A true theology will certainly be both 
pessimistic and optimistic ; for it will contain within its scope 
the doctrine of a paradise lost, with all the dreadful conse- 



3 H ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

quences past and present issuing from man's fall ; and also 
the doctrine of a paradise regained, wherein shall be no more 
sin and no more death. 

"We remember listening not long since to a sermon from 
the honored Bishop of Massachusetts, who has just passed 
away — noble man and eloquent preacher, but, as one of his 
eulogists has claimed, i a Broad-churchman without apology.' 
' We know that the Son of God has come/ was the text. As 
he went on in its unfolding, there was the rush of impassioned 
thought and fervent speech so characteristic of the speaker, 
bearing the great congregation irresistibly onward to the end. 
But when the sermon was completed one hearer began to re- 
flect in silent amazement upon what had been said. The sum 
of it was this, that the King's Son had been sent to visit an 
outlying province of the kingdom ; that at the tidings of his 
expected coming the whole people were filled with glad ex- 
pectation ; that his arrival was signaled by an outburst of 
popular acclamation, in which the people said one to another, 
' The King's Son honors us with a visit. He is our prince ; 
we are brothers. Let his coming give a new sense of our 
d vine sonship, a new impulse to our universal brother- 
hood.' It was a fascinating picture, and painted with a brush 
dipped without reserve in ' the enthusiasm of humanity.' To 
an eminent preacher of the new school, who was afterward 
expressing his admiration to us, we replied, ' Yes ; but, as a 
matter of fact, when the King's Son came, did not the citizens 
hate him, and send a message after him, saying, "We will not 
have this man to reign over us"? Did they not say, "This 
is the heir: come, let us kill him"? ' 

" ' Very true,' replied my friend ; ' but you must remember 
that the preacher is an idealist.' 

" And this is the point of the whole matter. We are bound 
to be realists in the pulpit, since we live in a world of real sin- 
ners in danger of real judgment— a judgment resting on the 



EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 315 

awful but real fact that men have rejected the Son of God, 
whom the Father sent into this world for their salvation. 
Idealism in poetry and in romance, if you please, but not in 
the sermon. Not that one should be a pessimist in preaching 
any more than an optimist ; he should, above all else, be a 
(ruthist. And he is the best friend of humanity who rouses 
men from their self-complacent dreams, and confronts them 
with the hard facts of real life and revealed truth. 

" We doubt if any Broad Church preacher has yet measured 
up to the superlative optimism of Professor Henry Drummond. 
One of his latest discourses lies before us as we write entitled 
' A City without a Church,' based on the words of Revela- 
tion, ' I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down 
from God out of heaven/ In what does the professor find 
the realization of this lofty vision? Listen: 'This city, then, 
which John saw, is none other than your city, the place where 
you live, as it might be, and as you are to help to make it. It 
is London, Berlin, New York, Paris, Melbourne, Calcutta/ etc. 
In a word, the dream is that by sanitation, by drainage, by 
ventilation, by education, the municipality where we reside is 
to be transfigured into a veritable city of God on earth. The 
part that we are to have in effecting this metropolitan evolu- 
tion is very glowingly set forth. ' Begin with the paper on 
the walls : make that beautiful ; with the air : keep it fresh ; 
with the very drains : make them sweet ; with the furniture : 
see that it is honest. Abolish whatsoever worketh abomina- 
tion in food, in drink, in luxury, in books, in art ; whatsoever 
worketh a lie in conversation, in social intercourse, in corre- 
spondence, in domestic life.' All very admirable ; but it is the 
possible evolution of New York, with its unspeakable Tam- 
many rule above and its Stygian pool of nameless sin be- 
neath, into a Jerusalem the Golden which staggers. our ima- 
gination. 

" And this is what is dreamed of by the preacher : ' What 



316 ADOXIRAM JUDSOX GORDO X 

John saw, we may fairly take it, was the future of all cities. . . . 
It was the dream of a new social order, a regenerate humanity, 
a purified society, an actual transformation of the cities of the 
world into cities of God.' Now we would not criticize the 
amiable philanthropy by which this transformation is proposed 
to be effected. But why not tell exactly what John did see? 
If it is worth while to take a text, why not expound it fairly in 
its relation to context and connection? First, John saw the 
earthly city, the metropolis of Christendom, as commentators 
have generally held, ' Babylon the great,' which has ' become 
the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and 
a cage of every unclean and hateful bird,' which has made 
1 all nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornica- 
tion.' But this city, so far from showing any upward de- 
velopment, goes down with a crash under the accumulated 
weight of her own abominations. 

" And John saw an angel who cried mightily with a strong 
voice, saying, 'Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen!' What 
a text is here for one who would preach to the cities of the 
nineteenth century! What an enforcement would be given 
to it by citing the long array of sister cities, from Sodom and 
Gomorrah to Pompeii and Herculaneum, which have sunk in 
like manner beneath the wrath of God against their accumu- 
lated sins! And what a tremendous force the preacher's warn- 
ing would have, after setting forth this solemn teaching of 
revelation and of history, if he were to cry to the cities of to- 
day, ' Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish'! 

" Only after the vision of the fallen city comes the other 
of the New Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven. 
How significant this expression in our preacher's text! The 
ideal city does not rise up by evolution ; it comes down by 
revelation. This is according to the divine way. When the 
race, in spite of all God's teaching, tended steadily downward, 
redemption was effected only by ' the Son of man, who came 



EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 317 

down from heaven? When natural birth gendered only to sin 
and death, a great Teacher appeared, saying, ' Except a man 
be bom from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God/ And 
when the history of great cities has repeated itself century 
after century, in luxury ending in corruption, and corruption 
ending in doom, God sets before us our only hope of munici- 
pal righteousness and holiness in a city ' coming dow?i from 
God out of heaven? 

" This teaching is not congenial, but it is convicting. Tell 
men the exact truth — that when God sent his only Son into 
the world he received a crucifixion instead of a coronation, 
and that therein is made manifest the last and most awful 
revelation of its depravity ; and the tendency of such faithful 
preaching will be to make men despair of human nature, and, 
as their only hope, lay hold of the divine nature. Tell men 
the literal fact of the repeated doom and decay of great cities 
under the weight of social depravity, and it may lead them 
to ' look for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and 
maker is God.' The hard, literal truth is not popular ; opti- 
mistic dreams are immensely so. Lord Chesterfield's maxim 
is universally true : l If you would make men think well of 
you, make them think well of themselves.' But how constantly 
is it the mission of the faithful prophet to make men think 
meanly of themselves, that they may learn to think well of 
Christ! 

" So far as the actual facts go, there is no evidence that the 
idyl of social evolution has any foundation. Within the sphere 
of conscious experience we may speak dogmatically. Saints 
are not evolved from sinners, except through the new birth ; 
and New Jerusalems are not evolved from municipal Babylons 
by improved drainage and sanitation. This is the undoubted 
fact, and on the whole we deem it more profitable to be oc- 
cupied in ' truthing it in love ' than in dreaming it in optimism." 

No doubt it took courage to assert this view in those years, 



318 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

when the idea of " progress " seemed absolutely to override 
the age. In later years the drift of opinion has been far away 
from the speculative optimism formerly prevailing. This 
frame of mind, as Huxley remarked in almost his last message 
to the world, "is met with more commonly at the tables of 
the healthy and wealthy than in the congregations of the 
wise." * It was enough for Gordon that the New Testament 
placed our hopes in something far greater than industrial re- 
form or diffused education, in something more blessed than a 
Utopia of production and distribution, where, under the hap- 
piest conditions, death would yet yearly slay its millions, and 
disease waste and torture its tens of millions, and sin haunt 
and trap and destroy. A New Jerusalem with such citizens 
would be the hatefulest of nightmares. It adds much to our 
interest to know that those best qualified to judge concur in 
his belief that " our passion for progress is in great part the 
product of an infatuation which consists in forgetting the goal 
to be aimed at, and in absorbing itself in the pride and de- 
light of each tiny step, one after another." t The verdict of 

* Sheldonian address, u Ethics and Evolution. " " The theory of evo- 
lution encourages no millennial anticipations. If for millions of years our 
globe has taken the upward road, yet some time the summit will be reached 
and the downward road will be commenced. The most daring imagina- 
tion will hardly venture upon the suggestion that the power and intelli- 
gence of man can ever arrest the procession of the great year." 

t Amiel, "Journal Intime," p. 169. 

For example, Bryce says (" American Commonwealth," vol. ii., p. 733) : 
" In Europe, whose thinkers have seldom been in a less cheerful mood 
than they are to-day, there are many who seem to have lost the old faith 
in progress ; many who feel, when they recall the experiences of the long 
pilgrimages of mankind, that the mountains which stand so beautiful in 
the blue distance, touched here by flashes of sunlight and there by shadows 
of the clouds, will, when one comes to traverse them, be no Delectable 
Mountains, but scarred by storms and seamed by torrents, with wastes of 
stone above and marshes stagnating in the valleys." 

And Professor Seelye in like vein: " The creed which makes human 



EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 319 

history is, so far as it expresses itself on such matters, ex- 
ceedingly dubious as to the way society is moving and as to 
the distance it has covered toward better things. Froude, 
Taine, Bryce, Carlyle, Sir Henry Maine, J. E. Thorold Rogers, 
Professor Seeley, and Mr. John Morley are but a few of those 
who seem to regard the conception of progress as a mirage. His- 
tory ends, indeed, in a cul-de-sac from which there is no escape. 
But it is just here, Dr. Gordon would say, that in the New 
Testament scheme despair is transmuted into hope, pessimism 
into optimism. The escape is from above. As man was re- 
deemed individually by the first coming of Christ, so he is to 
be redeemed collectively and socially in the second coming, 
Jesus did not teach us to pray daily, " Thy kingdom come," 
only to mock us with such travesties on his kingdom as prevail 
wherever men have built cities and founded states. If it were 
so, there are not a few who, rather than face a future such as 
the past, would long to see Huxley's " kindly comet " efface 
with its hot, shriveling impact this suffering planet. But it is 
just because the King is coming in the power of his kingdom 
that we can patiently endure the present controlling democracy 
of lusts and crowding selfishnesses and shouldering vanities, 
with its " cries and counter-cries of feud and faction." Even 
the darkness has its message of cheer. " The shadows point to 
the dawn. As I wake in the twilight of the morning, I often 

nature larger makes men at the same time capable of profounder sins ; 
admitted into a holier sanctuary, they are exposed to the temptation of a 
greater sacrilege ; awakened to the sense of new obligations, they some- 
times lose their simple respect for the old ones ; saints that have resisted 
the subtlest temptations sometimes begin again, as it were, by yielding 
without a struggle to the coarsest ; hypocrisy has become tenfold more in- 
genious and better supplied with disguises ; in short, human nature has 
inevitably developed downward as well as upward, and if the Christian ages 
be compared with those of heathenism, they are found worse as well as 
better, and it is possible to make a question whether mankind has gained 
on the whole." (" Ecce Homo," p. 351.) 



320 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

see the glimmer of the street-lamps falling upon the walls of 
my chamber ; but in a little while the lamp-lighter 'passes by 
and turns out one after another, leaving the room in deeper 
darkness than it had been at any time during the whole night. 
Yet I know that he is only putting out the street-lamps because 
the sun is about to rise and flood all the heavens with his light. 
So the darkness heralds the dawn." 

In the light of the church's present attitude on this subject, 
the question of Jesus, " Shall the Son of man, when he cometh, 
find faith on the earth? " seems prophetically suggestive. For, 
as the careless world repudiates Christ in his capacity of Sav- 
iour, so too, largely, the church denies him in his great and 
ever-imminent final mission to mankind. "The Syrian stars 
look down upon a grave from which Jesus never rose." This 
is the utterance of agnosticism. " The Syrian stars look out 
from distances through which Jesus shall never come again in 
person. " This is the utterance of the dominant Christianity. 
If Christ is not risen our faith is vain. Yes, and if Christ is 
not coming our faith is doubly vain ; for the risen Lord has 
then denied his promises and broken his plighted word. With- 
out this hope we, who are disillusioned of the old watch-cry, 
° Progress," must indeed be "of all men most miserable. " 

" We need two motives, memory and hope, to keep the soul 
in equilibrium. Memory must constantly draw us back to the 
cross, and hope must constantly attract us forward to the 
crown, if our hearts are to be kept in even and balanced com- 
munion with God. As the waters of the sea are held between 
two mighty gravitations, the moon now drawing those waters 
toward itself, and the earth now drawing them back again, 
thus giving us the ebbing and flowing tide by which our earth 
is kept clean and healthful, so must the tides of the soul's 
affection move perpetually between the cross of Christ and 
the coming of Christ, influenced now by the power of memory, 
and now by the power of hope." 



EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 3 21 

On this doctrine Gordon's voice was " to unawakened earth 
the trumpet of a prophecy. " Hardly a sermon was preached 
without some allusion to " the glorious appearing." Never a 
day passed in which he did not prepare himself for it, in which 
its hastening was not sought for with prayer. " Yet a little 
while [how little! how little!], and he that shall come will 
come." * Those who know him will not soon forget the pathos 
and tenderness with which he used to introduce the untrans- 
lated words (ooov, ooov) into his reading of the passage. No 
Christian of the early church ever looked with more assurance 
for the manifestation of the Lord in the clouds. In his papers 
were found the following lines, which show what a reality the 
promise of Christ was to him personally, and how earnestly 
he cherished the hope of that coming which some day will 
purple the whole glad east. 

( Translated. ) 



" Day-dawn and morning star, 
And upward call for me. 
Ring out, ye bells of heaven, clear and far, 
When I my Lord shall see. 

II 

" Caught up to meet the Lord 
With sweep of angel wing, 
No winding-sheet for me, or house of sod! 
O death, where is thy sting? 

ill 

" Put out to sea no more ; 

Drop anchor, furl the sail : 
My storm-tossed bark at last has reached the shore ; 
I'm moored within the veil." 



Heb. x. 37. 



322 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

Advocacy of this doctrine cost him much. It seems to 
awaken suspicion and lead to estrangement— this great doc- 
trine of hope. "It is not wanted," he used to say, "by a 
church w T ith millionaire merchants and great universities. 
But, after all, it was for the assertion of this doctrine that 
Christ at the last was crucified.* The servant is not greater 
than his Lord, and should not complain of mere ostracism." 
Having the almost entire consensus of learned opinion with 
him as to New Testament teaching on the subject,t he w T as 
content to wait until the church should forsake allegorizing 
and spiritualizing interpretations, and turn back to the hope 
in its literalness. Meanwhile he always cautioned reasonable- 
ness and balance in the treatment of this as of other prophetic 
teaching. 

" There has been more or less fanaticism in time past con- 
nected with this doctrine ; and that may be a testimony to its 
truth. A Chinese proverb says, * Towers are measured by 
their shadows, and great men by the detraction which follows 
them.' It is so of doctrines ; those that are most compact 
with truth cast the deepest shadows of superstition. The es- 
chatology of the new-departure theology will cast no shadow ; 
it is so vague and general that the sunlight will easily shine 
through it. But those who hold the eschatology of the first 
century must guard it sacredly from all extravagance and 
excess. The best way is to be very certain about the fact of 
the Lord's return and very uncertain about the time ; to pro- 
fess no more than the Scriptures profess— that we know neither 
the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh." 

Nevertheless he believed that the New Testament gave 
significant intimations as to the occurrences which should pre- 

* " Hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of 
power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." (Matt. xxvi. 64.) 

t Godet, Christlieb, Pfleiderer, Alford, Ellicott, Harnack, Meyer, 
Oehler, Steir, etc. 



EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 323 

cede and attend the second coming. In days when it is the 
custom to mutilate the gospel and to cast aside all that cannot 
be made to accord with preconceived opinions, the extent and 
importance of New Testament prophecy is generally over- 
looked. Those who dwell on the predictions in Isaiah, in 
Micah, and in the Psalms, the foregleams of Messiah's com- 
ing, will hear little of the passages in Matthew, Romans, 
Thessalonians, and the Apocalypse premonitory of his return. 
Eschatology is to most Christians an Ultima Thule, a far- 
away, acknowledged fact, yet of little interest in every-day 
life, Voyages thither are the most adventurous which men 
can make, and travelers returning thence are listened to with 
incredulous ears. 

Yet why should it seem a strange thing that God should 
send a ray of light through history to guide the children of 
light? Surely he who lives beyond and above the time relation 
to which we are subject, and to whom past, present, and future 
are one, knows the last as perfectly as the first. May he not 
have sent from Patmos a message to us which those in the 
Spirit can interpret, just as he has sent from the remotest stars 
before the dawn of our history pencils of light whose story the 
spectroscope unseals and reads to us late-born? So Gordon 
thought. " Fossil sunlight," said he, " is what Herschel named 
anthracite coal. The vast stores of light poured out upon the 
globe during past geological ages were consolidated and 
packed away in the bowels of the earth because this busy nine- 
teenth century, with its myriads of railways and ocean steamers 
and manufactories, would need them. Have you thought 
how large a proportion of both Testaments is prediction? And 
is it therefore of no use to the practical working church of to- 
day? Nay ; the vast profusion of prophetic light, falling upon 
the minds of the prophets and treasured up in their inspired 
pages, may soon be needed. And those who are delving in 
the mines of eschatology, instead of being engaged in an aim- 



3 2 4 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

less and profitless toil, may be providing the church with the 
needed warmth for that predicted time when iniquity shall 
abound and the love of many wax cold, and with light for the 
day foretold by the watchman of Idumea: 'The morning 
cometh, and also the night.' " * 

The first of these intimations of the Lord's near approach 
he found in the universal promulgation of the gospel which is 
taking place in our day. The witnessing churches which are 
being planted world over announce the coming King as the 
. fire-beacons which flashed from hilltop to hilltop round the 
whole arc of the ^Egean coast proclaimed the fall of Troy and 
the return of Agamemnon to Argos. Here he found the final 
and urgent motive for foreign missionary work. If one be- 
lieves that the renovation of the world is contingent on the 
return of Christ, and that the time of his return will be deter- 
mined, as far as the church is concerned, by a witnessing of 
the gospel of the kingdom among all people, no expression of 
doubt as to the preeminent value of missionary work among 
the brutalized and pagan peoples of earth can deter one from 
any self-sacr'fice which should hasten that consummation. 
Now this was what Gordon believed: "We are literally the 
people described by Paul as those upon whom the ends of* 

* He did not believe that the Book of Revelation was written by a 
" Deus quidam deceptor " to befool us with strange symbology. " Its 
weird, mysterious pages contain," so he once wrote, '' the whole map and 
delineation of the church's career from the ascension to the return of the 
N Lord, but it was left for time to break the seals of this book and to dis- 
cover its meaning. It is like the sealed orders given to an admiral which 
he is not to open till he is on the sea. And as now, corresponding to this • 
chart, headland after headland of prophetic history has been descried, they 
have been recognized by the students who have been searching what and 
what manner of time the Spirit did signify in penning this prophecy. And 
though they have read no announcement of day or hour upon them, they 
have found them displaying the same cautionary signal with which the 
church started, ' Behold, I come as a thief.' " 



EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 325. 

the ages are come.* We are living at the terminal point of 
the old and the germinal point of the new, and happy shall 
we be if we know the time of our visitation." 

Again, identifying as he did the papacy — "that stupendous 
spider-web which, reaching from Goa to Acapulco and from 
heaven to hell, o'ernets the souls and thoughts of men " — with 
the Antichrist of John, he naturally found in its loss of tem- 
poral rule and in its steady decadence suggestions of the ap- 
proach of him who should destroy it altogether with the 
"brightness of his coming. , ' f To many such an interpreta- 
tion will seem fantastic and obsolete, the worn heritage of the 
wars of the Reformation. This is natural enough in our day 
when the papacy constitutes a comparatively unimportant fig- 
ure, whose weakness is acknowledged in its policy of opportu- 
nism, and whose existence would be half forgotten were it not 
for its assiduous advertising by encyclicals. Those who dep- 
recate this Puritan exegesis, however, forget the blackness 
and vastness of the shadow which this institution has cast, for 
a space of time covering nearly one fourth of the centuries, 
from the first dawn of human history. They forget its por- 
tentous crimes against light and the inexpressible savagery, 
lust, and deceit which have here incarnated themselves. No 
one who has read Gregorovius and Von Ranke, and who re- 
members the literal portraiture of history, can ever complain 
of this identification as harsh. Scientific history, with its 
Bertillon-like methods, has measured and photographed this 
old offender. So if it is true that the papacy is the only por- 
tent in Christian history wicked and forbidding enough to 
answer to the prophecy of Antichrist, it is conversely true that 
no theory can explain this grotesque satanophany, this incred- 
ible perversion of early Christianity, except that which con- 
siders it a predicted and mysteriously predestined device for 
turning the truth into a lie. Surely there are no naturalistic 
* 1 Cor. x. 11. t 2 Thess. ii. 8. 



326 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

grounds on which this bar sinister on the church of Christ can 
be accounted for. There was nothing, surely, in the content 
of Christianity as preached by the apostles which could lead 
one to foresee any such abnormal development. 

The movements in Israel, too, filled Gordon with anticipa- 
tion. To all thoughtful men the survival of the Jewish race 
must seem one of the most extraordinary facts in history. 
The shock of the barbarian invasions was so intense as to re- 
sult in the complete evaporation of the Greek race ; but the 
Jew has remained, as those preglacial plants and butterflies 
which still linger on our highest peaks, surviving the ages 
when ice covered whole continents and destroyed all other life. 
And what centuries of brutal persecution he has since under- 
gone! Greek orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism have been 
the ceaselessly turning millstones to bray and pulverize him. 
Yet he not merely survives, an indestructible residuum in the 
retort of history ; his emergence into the place of leadership 
is one of the striking facts of present-day life. The names 
of David Strauss, Mendelssohn, Heine, Marx, Neander, 
Gambetta, Halevy, Rothschild, De Hirsch, Liebknecht, 
Rubinstein, Disraeli, Bebel, Stendhal, Ricardo, Darmesteter, 
Franzos, Goldmark, Auerbach, Joseph Israels, Emin Bey, 
Bernard Weiss, Meyerbeer, Lasalle, Mendelijeff, Edersheim, 
the Saphirs, Palakof, Castelar, Blum Pasha, and a host of 
others, are suggestive of the power still latent in the race. 
For a Christian to doubt the extraordinary future in store for 
the people of the old covenant seems, in the light of the 
eleventh of Romans, wholly inexplicable. For him to question 
it in these days of Jewish renaissance is wilful blindness. To 
think that a race with such a past and of so great present 
vigor is to be forever condemned to play the humiliating role 
of pawnbroker and vender of old clothing to those of the outer 
court argues a mind singularly impervious to the significance 
of current events. " Those who are opposed to millenarian- 



EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 327 

ism/' wrote Gordon, " seem to consider Israel as a factor in 
God's providence utterly eliminated, nevermore to emerge. 
When they hear any discourse on the subject of the conver- 
sion or regathering of Israel, they consider it quite as absurd 
as it would be for one to suggest the revival of stage-coaches 
and hand-weaving after a half-century of railroads and looms. 
The gathering of immense wealth into the hands of the Jew, 
as though in preparation for some vast demand upon his re- 
sources soon to be made ; the control which he has gained of 
the secular press in European countries ; his rapid ascendancy 
in the sphere of politics and philosophy all over the world ; his 
complicity in the revolutionary and antichristian movements 
which are now agitating and alarming the nations ; and, lastly, 
his expulsion from the countries where he has dwelt and his 
visible regathering into the land of his ancient habitation — 
these are significant premonitions of a stupendous and long- 
predicted event : the removal of the veil from blinded Israel 
and the looking upon him whom they have pierced." 

Gordon found, as he looked with straining eyes into the 
approaching years, a sort of historical barometer in the Jewish 
race. Their present rapid rise he felt to be indicative of a 
fair morning ahead. The organization of the Chovevi Zion, 
with its hundreds of thousands of members of all classes, from 
the Montefiores and Goldsmids to the poorest Polish and 
Rumanian schnorrers, and the expressed intention of its con- 
stituency of purchasing and repeopling Palestine, filled him 
with quivering interest. At various times he set apart in his 
church special days of prayer for the Jews. For the some- 
what noisy " reformed " rabbis, who revile their own great past 
and frivolously throw aside the promises of future national 
restoration, he often expressed his repugnance. But to the poor 
enmeshed Talmudist he was ever ready to stretch out his hand. 
His interest in the race was not merely exegetical. Many refu- 
gees from eastern Europe— outcasts too frequently, with the 



< 3 28 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

unlovely traits of the "hungry Greekling" of the Lower 
Empire — he helped at his door or in their own poor homes. 

The restitution of Israel and its grafting in again he looked 
for as one of the great events consequent upon Chrises com- 
ing. But the advent day is also the day of the resurrection — 
" that blessed last of deaths, when death is dead." Here, as 
before, his beliefs were those of the early church untainted by 
Hellenicisms. Those two errors of an earthly theology, " that ' 
the world is the Christian's home and that the grave is the 
Christian's hope," were unqualifiedly rejected. To an exposi- 
tion of the last verse of the eleventh of Hebrews he adds this 
conclusion, which in its connection may seem somewhat 
mystical, but which is in its main teaching scriptural : 

" Bodily perfection as well as spiritual perfection is included 
in the idea of complete sanctification. As the earlier martyrs , 
must wait for the later martyrs before they can receive their 
full consummation of blessedness, so must the renewed soul 
wait for the renewed body in order that it may be perfected. 
The radical error in our consideration of the subject has been 
that we have fixed our attention entirely upon the spiritual 
part of man, as though this alone were the % I ' in which his 
personality consists. Because our eschatology has so gener- 
ally overlooked this great fact and substituted the doctrine 
of the immortality of the soul for the scriptural doctrine of 
the resurrection of the man, the eye has been fixed on death 
as the object of hope. And because our dying is held to re- 
lease the soul from its gross environment of flesh, this event 
has been made the goal of the spirit's perfection. But is 
death the great sanctifier? No ; it is only when the glorified 
soul is united to the glorified body that we shall awake satis- 
fied in his likeness— an instantaneous photograph of Christ 
wrought in his members — the predestined purpose of redemp- 
tion, that we should be conformed to the image of his Son, 
consummated at last in a flash of advent glory. 



EVOLUTION, OR THE APPEARING? 329 

" Those who have not watched the trend of opinion on this 
point have little idea of the extent to which even in orthodox 
ranks the Swedenborgian notion of elimination has supplanted 
the primitive doctrine of resurrection. Instead of holding that 
at the sound of the last trump God ' will quicken your mortal 
bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you/ it is becoming very 
common to maintain that at death a spiritual, incorporeal sub- 
stance is released from the body. Thus one's death is his 
resurrection, since in that event an imprisoned spiritual body 
breaks its shell and comes forth like the butterfly from the 
chrysalis. It is not, therefore, the angel's trumpet calling the 
dead from the grave that ushers in the resurrection, but the 
sexton's bell tolling the dead to the grave. This notion seems 
to result largely from that ultra-spiritualism which would rule 
the body out of all recognition in the work of redemption. 
There is a kind of Manichean contempt for flesh and bones, 
and a feeling that it is gross materialism to assign them any 
place in the glorified life." 



CHAPTER XXIV 

IN LABORS ABUNDANT 

Address before the Evangelical Alliance, 1890— Church unity— Personal 
experience of faith healing— Work in Chicago, 1890 and 1893— The 
World's Fair campaign — Rabinowitz 

IN the winter of 1890 the Evangelical Alliance met in Bos- 
ton. It fell to Dr. Gordon to give the address of welcome 
to the delegates. A portion of the address, illustrating his 
opinions on certain of the important questions with which the 
conference had to deal, we transcribe here. 

After a few introductory sentences on the significance of 
these cooperative religious movements, he said : 

" I have therefore few tears to shed with those who are 
weeping over ' the scandal of a divided Christendom/ as the 
phrase is. True, a church divided into manifold sects is not 
the ideal church ; it is not the church which our Lord inaugu- 
rated in the beginning, and it is not the church for which he 
prayed in the end. But as the strength of Christ is made per- 
fect in our weakness, so, I doubt not, the unity of Christ will 
finally be made perfect through our divisions. If a divided 
church meant a divided Christ, we might well lament and 
weep over the sects of Christendom ; but if these sects hold 
the Head, this cannot be the case. As a handful of quick- 
silver flung to the earth breaks into a hundred separate glob- 
ules reflecting a full-orbed sun, so, though by disruptions and 

330 



IN LABORS ABUNDANT 331 

revolutions and reformations the church has been broken into 
a hundred sects, each sect may hold in the bosom of its faith 
a full-orbed Christ. 

"Therefore I beg you to reflect that for the last hundred 
years our ascended Lord has been showing what he can do 
through a divided church ; thus bringing higher glory to him- 
self out of what many regard as a most lamentable evil. 
' Divide and conquer ' is a maxim of skilful generalship. 
What if our great commander has said to his church, ' Be 
divided and conquer ■? I cannot otherwise translate the prov- 
idence of the nineteenth century. 

" The door of every nation under heaven was to be opened 
during this hundred years ; but the experience of all history 
proves that had the church been outwardly one, a conservative 
organic unity, holding all its parts together and moving them 
according to a uniform law of action, she would have been 
unequal to the task of entering these doors and conquering 
these nations. 

" But look again. These sects have put into the field one 
hundred and forty-six foreign missionary societies, which are 
now operating along various lines and by divers methods for 
giving the gospel to the world. By the division of labor provi- 
dentially arranged the Scriptures have been translated into two 
hundred and eighty dialects, the work of translation having 
progressed so rapidly that, as we close the ninth decade of 
this century, we find the Bible accessible to nine tenths of the 
entire human family. 

" Observe, too, how the Christian forces have been deployed, 
as though an invisible commander had been arranging for his 
final campaign. There are forty missionary societies operat- 
ing in India, thirty-three in China, thirty-four in Africa. Is 
there any likelihood that there would be a tenth of this num- 
ber in the three fields, or a hundredth of the men whom they 
employ, if there were only one great and all-inclusive church 



33 2 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

to which the evangelization of the world was intrusted? Take 
the Dark Continent, for example. Thirty-three regiments of 
the Protestant army have completely invested it, as though all 
ready to move inward for its final conquest. ' The nineteenth 
century has made the African free/ says Victor Hugo ; ' the 
twentieth is to make him a man.' But he cannot be a man 
except he is made acquainted with the divine Man, who alone 
can strike the fetters from his soul as he struck the chains 
from his body. 'Is Christ divided?' asked the apostle cen- 
turies ago. And from hundreds of missionary fields the answer 
comes to-day, ' Yes, divided only that he may be the more 
completely distributed to a starving world.' And over all we 
seem to see our risen Lord, holding in his pierced hands the 
fragments of his mystical body, the church, and saying to the 
hungry nations, ' This is my body broken for you? 

" But one may say, ' Yes ; but think of the wreck of doc- 
trine and the discord of faith which have been brought about 
by this disruption of the church. True ; but what of the gains 
which have come out of this great loss? In the disintegra- 
tion of the church a vast amount of free thinking and cheer- 
less speculat'on has been set free, even as the cold is liberated 
by the breaking up of a solid block of ice. But the question 
is, Has the ultimate temperature of Christianity been lowered 
or raised by the process? It is a magnificent answer which 
Professor Dollinger makes to those who point to the succes- • 
sive waves of deadly rationalism which have swept over Ger- 
many in the last three hundred years, as a convincing proof 
of the criminal evil of that church disruption brought about 
by Luther and his fellow-reformers. Admitting the evil of 
the rationalism, Dr. Dollinger replies that, nevertheless, nine 
tenths of all the best exegesis and the best theology of Ger- 
many has been contributed by this Protestant church which 
Luther led out from Rome. Here is a confirmation of the 
same idea of disunity working out the highest unity. The 



IN LABORS ABUNDANT 333 

full beauty of a ray of light never appears till it has been 
broken in the prism. So the harmony and glory of divine 
truth is destined to be made fully manifest only through the 
refraction which it has suffered in its sectarian divisions." 

The address closed with the following appeal in behalf of 
the poor and of the oppressed : 

" Upon the great questions that are now agitating society 
we find a characteristic temptation belonging to the olden age, 
one that was recorded concerning our Lord Jesus Christ — 
1 Command that these stones be made bread.' The great art 
of the adversary is to turn us Christians from soul-winners into 
bread-winners, to take the lower stratum of society and grind 
it up between the upper and nether millstone of power and 
capital, so that God may have to say again, ' Have all the 
workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as 
they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord ? ' ' Command 
that these stones be made bread' Our Lord Jesus Christ 
speaks just the opposite word : ' God is able of these stones 
to raise up children unto Abraham.' Stones they are, rough 
and uncouth, but they can be turned into living stones, builded 
together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. Stones 
they are : but under the discipline of God's hand they can be 
made into corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a 
palace. Stones they are : but in the hands of the great Lapi- 
dary they may be made to adorn his breastplate and shine 
with nameless beauty — topaz and beryl and jacinth, each giv- 
ing a different color to set forth the glory of the Lord." 

In the fall of this year Dr. Gordon underwent certain per- 
sonal experiences which were to him ever after as a divine 
imprimatur upon the doctrine of healing by faith which he 
advocated. These experiences were not indeed the first of 
their sort. Frequently in his letters references are made to 
relief from serious sicknesses obtained in this way. 

" I had a sudden attack of the grippe," he writes during an 



334 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

epidemic of that disease— " high fever, chills, sore throat, pain 
in bones, headache, all coming on at three in the morning, 
when I had retired perfectly well. But I determined that 
Satan should not get the advantage, committed the case to 
the great Physician, and determined, in spite of much advice, 
to preach on Sunday. So I did, and found no trouble. All 
the difficulty is gone, praise the Lord ! " 

And at another time : 

" Many are sick among us of influenza. I was taken vio- 
lently, but I called upon the Lord, and though there was a 
little time of waiting, when the cure came it swept the trouble 
away, so that not a trace remained behind. This is contrary 
to common experience with this disease. But my Physician 
made short work of the case." 

In the case to which we now refer the sickness was of so 
radical a character and the cure so complete and effectual that 
the fact of divine intervention can hardly be doubted. For 
several years he had been subject to a severe and agonizing 
neuralgia of the solar plexus. The attacks, occasional at first, 
became, as time passed, more and more frequent and more 
and more distressing. Each one was followed by days of 
complete exhaustion. Medical applications, rest, in fact, 
everything suggested, were tried without any permanent relief. 
In the winter of 1890 Mr. Moody had arranged for an ex- 
change of work with him, it being provided that he should 
lecture in the Chicago Training-school for one month. The 
neuralgic spasm, which was due now every second month, had 
been endured, and no further trouble was for the present ex- 
pected. A few days, however, before the time appointed for 
starting another terrible and wholly unlooked-for attack com- 
pletely prostrated the sufferer. A conference was held, and 
it was decided that the Chicago project must be abandoned. 
The physician present declared his conviction that the disease 
was now chronic, that the intervals between the seizures were 



IN LABORS ABUNDANT 335 

likely to narrow, and that the continuance of life was but a 
question of time and of the natural resources of physique. At 
the earnest request of the patient appeal was now carried up 
to God himself. The sick man was anointed according to 
the commandment. His own prayers were accompanied by 
those of the few Christian friends about the bedside. Shortly 
after he rose up dressed, and went to his study in the room 
below. The pain had somewhat subsided, yet it still ran 
strong in undercurrent. As he stood in front of the mantel, 
leaning and resting on it, he was suddenly seized by an awful 
paroxysm— the most intense that he had ever experienced. 
It was as if the demon of sickness were tearing him griev- 
ously for the last time — for it was the last time. Never again 
did it enter the precincts of that body. The following week 
Gordon left for Chicago. For a whole month he lectured 
daily to the students, preparing the lectures as he proceeded, 
preaching twice or thrice each Sunday, conducting evening 
meetings during the week, and writing in the snatches of leisure 
his little book, " Faith— the First Thing in the World." Four 
more years passed before his death, years of extraordinary 
burden-bearing. Not the slightest intimation of the old 
chronic difficulty ever intruded. Never in all his life had he 
such a wealth of physical resource wherewith to perform the 
tasks laid on him, and accompanying physical healing there 
entered into him a new tide of spiritual life and blessing. 

The summer of '93 found Dr. Gordon again in Chicago, 
lecturing to the students of the Bible Institute and preaching 
in the great meetings which Mr. Moody had organized in that 
city. These meetings were designed to reach the millions 
visiting the Exposition. Four theaters, five tents, and many 
churches were jammed every evening and several times on 
Sunday with strangers from all parts of the earth. Thirty- 
eight preachers, evangelists, and singers instructed the multi- 
tudes, while several hundred students in residence cooperated 



33 6 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

in an endless variety of house-to-house and highway-and-hedge 
effort. The Fair was finally closed on Sunday, after an ex- 
hibition on the part of the managers, upon the shamelessness 
of which there is no need to dilate here. The people refused 
to go in sufficient numbers to warrant Sunday opening. But 
the evangelistic services secured a Sabbath attendance of more 
than thirty-five thousand and an entire weekly attendance of 
not less than one hundred thousand. Even the great show- 
man Forepaugh was obliged to capitulate to Mr. Moody. 
The circus tents, which had been opened for Sunday amuse- 
ment, were handed over without charge and forthwith filled 
by ten thousand people. 

For a whole month Gordon preached to hungry thousands, 
teaching all the while at the school on Institute Place. The 
influence of this work of Mr. Moody and his assistants was 
very far-reaching, and important in the life of thousands. The 
attention of the press and of the public was of course turned 
upon the " Parliament of Religions," with its cardinal's tea- 
gown, its shaven-pated bonzes, and its facile sub-truthful Cal- 
cutta babus. This to the novelty-seekers was the most impor- 
tant ''religious " feature of that summer in Chicago. But of 
this heterogeneous assembly most men who know the East — 
the obscenities of Benares, the linga-worship of Muttra, the 
degraded beggary of Mandalay, to say nothing of present-day 
Islamism in Armenia — cherish convictions not flattering either 
to its promoters or co its participants. Gordon himself regarded 
the proceedings as thoroughly misleading in their appraisement 
of non-Christian systems, and as gratuitously disheartening 
to the representatives of our Lord among the heathen. The 
strangers whom he welcomed and with whom he consorted 
were of a very different type. None interested him more than 
a visitor from Bessarabia, Joseph Rabinowitz, whom Delitzsch 
considered the most remarkable Jewish convert since Saul of 



IN IABORS ABUNDANT 337 

Tarsus. In a few notes Gordon describes his conversations 
with this Israelite of the new covenant. 

" Going to Chicago in July last for a month's service in con- 
nection with Mr. Moody's World's Fair evangelization cam- 
paign, we found ourselves at our lodgings placed in the next 
room to a Russian guest, whose name was not yet told us. 
Hearing in the evening the strains of subdued and fervent 
Hebrew chanting, we inquired who our neighbor might be, 
and learned that it was one Joseph Rabinowitz, of Russia. 
Thus, to our surprise, we found ourselves next neighbor to one 
whom we would have crossed the ocean to see, with only a 
sliding door now between us. Introduction followed, and then 
three weeks of study and communion together concerning the 
things of the kingdom, the memory of which will not soon 
depart. 

" It seemed to us, as we talked day after day with this Is- 
raelite without guile and heard him pour out his soul in prayer, 
that we had never before witnessed such ardor of affection for 
Jesus and such absorbing devotion to his person and glory. 
We shall not soon forget the radiance that would come into 
his face as he expounded the Messianic psalms at our morn- 
ing or evening worship, and how, as here and there he caught 
a glimpse of the suffering or glorified Christ, he would suddenly 
lift his hands and his eyes to heaven in a burst of admira- 
tion, exclaiming, with Thomas after he had seen the nail-prints, 
' My Lord and my God/ So saturated was he with the letter 
as well as with the spirit of the Hebrew Scriptures that to hear 
him talk one might imagine it was Isaiah or some other pro- 
phet of the old dispensation. ' What is your view of inspira- 
tion? ' we once asked him, in order to draw him out concern- 
ing certain much-mooted questions of our time. ' My view 
is,' he said, holding up his Hebrew Bible, 'that this is the 
Word of God ; the Spirit of God dwells in it. When I read 



33 8 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

it I know that God is speaking to me, and when I preach it 
I say to the people, " Be silent, and hear what Jehovah will 
say to you." As for comparing the inspiration of Scripture 
with that of Homer or of Shakespeare, it is not a question of 
degree, but of kind. Electricity will pass through an iron bar, 
but it will not go through a rod of glass, however beautiful 
and transparent, because it has no affinity for it. So the Spirit 
of God dwells in the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, be- 
cause these are his proper medium, but not in Homer or 
Shakespeare, because he has no affinity with these writings.* 

" ' Do you know what questioning and controversies the 
Jews have kept up over Zechariah xii. 10? ' he asked one day. 
' '' They shall look upon me (n k) whom they have pierced." 
They will not admit that it is Jehovah whom they pierced. 
Hence the dispute about the whom; but do you notice that this 
word is simply the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, 
Aleph, Tav? Do you wonder, then, that I was filled with 
awe and astonishment when I opened to Revelation i. 7, 8, 
and read these words of Zechariah, now quoted by John, 
" Behold, he cometh with clouds ; and every eye shall see 
him, and they a'so which pierced him;" and then heard the 
glorified Lord saying, "I am Alpha and Omega"? Jesus 
seemed to say to me, '' Do you doubt who it is whom you 
pierced? I am the Aleph Tav, the Alpha Omega, Jehovah, 
the Almighty.' ' ' 

" Nothing could be more thrilling and pathetic than to hear 
this latter-day prophet of Israel dilate on the blessedness and 
glory of his nation when it shall at last be brought back into 
favor and fellowship with God. ' The Gentile nations cannot 
come to their highest blessing till then, nor can our rejected 
and crucified Messiah see of the travail of his soul and be 
satisfied till his kinsmen according to the flesh shall own and 
accept him.* Then, with a dramatic fervor and pathos im- 
possible to describe, he made the following beautiful com- 



IN IABORS ABUNDANT 339 

ment : i Jesus, the glorified head of the church, is making up 
his body now. Think you that my nation will have no place 
in that body? Yes; the last and most sacred place. When 
from India's and China's millions, and from the innumerable 
multitudes of Africa, and the islands of the sea the last Gentile 
shall have been brought in and Christ's body made complete, 
there will still be left a place for little Israel ; she will fill up 
the hole in his side — that wound which can never be closed 
till the nation which made it is saved.' " 

The deep affection which grew up between the two may be 
measured by the following brief note : 

" Kishenev, March II, 1895. 

" Dear Mrs. Gordon : The most sad news in the paper, 
'The Christian Herald,' about the death of your dear hus- 
band, my unforgotten friend, Dr. A. J. Gordon, reached me 
this morning. I was so overwhelmed with grief that for half 
an hour I could not keep back the tears. My wife and daugh- 
ter, seeing me so broken-hearted, could not help shedding tears 
also, saying to each other, ' See how he loved him.' 

" I assure you, dear Mrs. Gordon, that, far away over the 
ocean at Kishenev in South Russia, there is a heart deeply 
sympathizing with you in your bereavement, and lamenting 
with all those who personally knew dear Dr. Gordon and ex- 
perienced his gentle Christian love. I shall never forget those 
happy moments we spent together in Chicago. I remember 
well with what joy he looked forward to the restoration of 
Israel, to Jesus' appearing in glory. . . . He is now in the 
bosom of Abraham enjoying the nearness of his Lord Jesus, 
whom he served so faithfully. 

"Joseph Rabinowitz." 



CHAPTER XXV 

FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS 

Work among the Jews — The Chinese mission at Clarendon Street — Inci- 
dents — The transition to a spiritual church life 

DR. GORDON had, as has been suggested in the discus- 
sion of his theology, an especial interest in the future of 
Israel. Work among the Jews ever appealed to him, and was 
carried on with much vigor in his church. In the letters which 
follow we get a vivid impression of the character of this work. 
They are like leaves from that part of the Acts which describe 
the great apostle's experiences among the contentious, " stiff- 
necked " children of the synagogue in Derbe, in Lystra, and 
in Thessalonica. 

"We had a great day yesterday— house filled to the doors 
both morning and evening. The special feature of the evening 
was the baptism of our second Hebrew convert. Fifty Jews 
at least were present, and at the close a large number came 
into the after-meeting. The Christian Hebrews bore witness 
for Christ ; then the unconverted Hebrews began to get up. 
One vehemently declared that Christians hated the Jews and 
had always persecuted them. I tried in vain to show him that 

those who persecute are not Christian, but antichristian. B 

was there, having just returned from Russia. As a Russian 
Jew, he put in some heavy shots in the disputation with these 
objectors. For a half-hour they contended out of the Scriptures 
whether this is Christ." 

340 



FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS 341 

Again : " The Jewish work continues to be of great interest 
— one more confessed Christ last evening. The Hebrews of 
the North End are greatly excited over these accessions to 
Christ. Last Thursday night they assaulted Solomon as he 
was coming out of the hall. They called a meeting two weeks 
ago to see what could be done to resist the aggressions. The 
inclosed circular in Hebrew contains the call." 

" I am just home from prayer-meeting and am moved to 
write a word. It was a wonderful meeting to-night, the sub- 
ject being prayer for Israel. You would have believed the set 
time to favor Zion had come had you been there. One German 
Jew, a recent arrival from Europe, prayed powerfully in German. 

S followed in broken English. Then H S , who 

is to unite with us next church meeting, spoke. He is a little 
fellow, born in Boston, but he spoke like a patriarch for wisdom 
and solidity. It was really wonderful how he set forth Christ 
and magnified his grace. Then a new man, quite prominent 
among the Hebrews, Niles tells me, rose to avow r his deter- 
mination to follow Christ. Perhaps the day of the Gentiles is 
drawing to a close. It really came to me very powerfully that 
it might be so, as I called in vain for confessors among our 
people, and then saw these rise so readily to own Jesus, for I 
know all that this involves. Persecution is breaking out bit- 
terly. Several new-comers among us spoke of their surprise 
and delight at hearing us talk about the conversion of Israel, 

Dr. N— , Mr. McE , and myself having taken up the 

subject. It is such a new and surprising thing to many. Alas, 
what do they lose who know nothing of this subject and con- 
nected truths! Had we not best begin to pray that the veil 
be removed from the faces of Gentile Christians, especially 
ministers of the gospel who know nothing of this theme? " 

A long list of uncouth, monosyllabic names at the end of 
the church directory attests the patient interest which the 
Clarendon Street Church has taken in the Chinese of the city. 



34 2 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

A school was organized many years ago for these strangers. 
Its proportions grew rapidly. More than one hundred laundry- 
men from all parts of Boston and from adjacent towns meet 
each Sabbath. Of the twenty-five or more who were received 
as members, Gordon once said : " They have proved superior 
in most respects to any class of foreigners that has come 
among us. Instead of being a burden to the church, it is their 
disposition to take their place as burden-bearers with their 
brethren in Christ. As they are exceedingly industrious and 
thrifty in their business, so they are very hearty and generous 
in their gifts for the work of the Lord. The first man who 
was converted to Christ wrote out a statement of his conversion 
and his views of the Christian doctrine. I have that document 
in my possession. He wrote it without the aid of anybody. 
In all the fifty years in which the church has been in existence, 
we have never received an account of a conversion or a state- 
ment of the doctrines of Christianity so complete and explicit 
and satisfactory as the one which this Chinaman wrote out on 
entering the church." 

For these Asiatics Dr. Gordon ever had a deep concern. 
In his late years he frequently remarked that if he were to begin 
life anew it would be as a missionary to the East. It was with 
peculiar delight, therefore, that he brought these men into the 
church of Christ. None will forget with what significant so- 
lemnity he used to repeat before his congregation of Americans, 
when baptizing "these from the land of Sinim," the words of 
the Lord, " And I say unto you, that many shall come from 
the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and 
Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven : but the sons of 
the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness." 

To all with whom he came in contact, no matter how ac- 
cidentally, he ministered. "Returning one morning from an 
errand," writes a correspondent in Waterville, Me., where 
Gordon had held a ten days' conference during the summer 



FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS 343 

of '94, " he called at our house and said, ' I think that the 
Chinaman down here on the street is interested in religion, 
and I wish you would speak to him/ No amount of care and 
labor for the conference and for the whole world could drive 
from his mind and heart a sense of the need of the individual 
soul. He saw in the Celestial stranger laundryman ' my neigh- 
bor/ " 

Many things have occurred which illustrate the fruitfulness 
of this branch of church work, and which conclusively refute 
the common assertion that these " stolid, tricky Asiatics " are 
beyond the reach of the gospel. One circumstance connected 
with the opening of the school is of special interest. Jure Sim, 
who, as first member of the church, gave such an intelligent 
exposition of doctrine, had been taught in the Scriptures by a 
lady before the Chinese Mission at Clarendon Street had been 
started. Soon after entering into membership he became con- 
vinced of the advantages which a Chinese school in the church 
would have. Without consulting any one, he set apart a week 
in which to pray that the Lord might establish such a school. 
Three times in the day he went by himself to press this request. 
Day after day followed without answer. On Friday noon, 
when he knelt down— so he explained afterward— something 
seemed to say to him, " Jure Sim, you must not pray for that 
any more. You have been answered. " In the evening and on 
the following morning the same words were unaccountably im- 
pressed upon his mind. Shortly after he had begun work in 
his laundry Saturday morning, the mail-carrier stepped in and 
handed him a letter. On opening it he found a large red card, 
on which was printed, in English on one side and in Chinese 
upon the other, " A mission school for Chinese will be opened 
in the Clarendon Street Church, Sunday, March 4, 1887." 

That conversion is much the same experience among all 
peoples can be clearly seen from the following : 

Chin Tong came into the school a raw, uncouth, unrespon- 



344 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

sive Chinaman. Unlike most of his fellows, he was in his 
person very unclean and unsavory. The teacher to whom he 
was assigned worked with him month after month without 
making upon him the least apparent impression. One Sunday 
the text, " If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to for- 
give us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness/ ' 
was marked in his New Testament and assigned for the next 
lesson. When he turned up the following Sabbath the verse 
was almost obliterated from the page by the incessant movement 
of his finger back and forth over the lines. One word alone 
puzzled him, the word " cleanse." However, this was easily 
explained to one whose daily work was over tubs and ironing- 
boards. During the next week a young man called twice at 
the teacher's home, but would not leave his name. When the 
hour for the Chinese school came round again the teacher took 
her seat in the accustomed place. Presently a man in Oc- 
cidental dress entered and sat down beside her. It was Chin 
Tong, but so changed as not to be recognizable. His cue was 
off, his hair shingled, his long finger-nails pared, his face clean 
as a new coin, his clothes new and well cared for. The text 
had done its work. " Jesus Christ make me clean inside and 
outside," he explained. Heart, mind, and person had been 
transformed. 

These Chinese Christians have organized a Y. M. C. A. 
among themselves, hiring a house near the church for its per- 
manent quarters. They have, too, a lot in Mount Hope Ceme- 
tery, where Christians can be buried apart without the usual con- 
comitants of heathen funerals. Some years ago one of their 
number died. Through some misunderstanding the pastor of 
the church was absent, and the funeral exercises arranged for 
had to be omitted. When they had gotten back to the Chinese 
Home they fell to talking about their dead friend. Every one 
regretted that Lue Pen should have been laid away " as a dog " 
without a Christian service. They determined, therefore, to 



FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS 345 

hold a little meeting by themselves over the grave. Four of 
them accordingly went out the next day to the distant cemetery 
with an armful of flowers, and, gathering about the grave, read 
the account of the resurrection of Jesus, and of the walk to 
Emmaus, above the fresh mound. Then all knelt down, and 
in turn commended their friend and themselves to the Lord of 
the resurrection. 

Yee Gow was one of the older men in the school, a slow, 
good, blundering fellow whom none could help liking and half 
pitying. One winter he fell sick and passed rapidly into con- 
sumption. He was carried to the hospital, but not much 
could be done for him. He was a Christian, and was fre- 
quently visited by his Chinese brethren. On the last day of 
his life he was found by Wong Tsin Chong, who had come to 
pray with the weak and disheartened sufferer. Wong did his 
best to cheer him with hopes of heaven. The old man did 
not respond with much eagerness at first. " I don't know 
whether I want to go there, after all," he reiterated. " I won't 
know anybody there ; nobody will care for me." " Never 
mind, Yee Gow," was the reply ; " I shall be there before long ; 
and when I get there I will look first for the Lord Jesus, and 
when I find him I'll bring him to you." The old man was 
comforted and closed his eyes in peace. 

"Wong Tsin Chong," writes Gordon, "whom we call 'our 
Chinese deacon/ so faithful is he in looking after his ' country- 
people ' and fellow- Christians in the church, is a remarkable 
man. No Sunday passes without finding him preaching the 
gospel to his countrymen in the Chinese quarter. As he stands 
in the street speaking in his native tongue, crowds of English- 
speaking people will often gather. Then, changing his language, 
he will plead with these to be reconciled to Christ. ' W T hat 
kind of Christian ? ' do you ask ? Would that there were 
scores of such! His sole thought day and night is how to 
reach his ' country-people ' at home and abroad. . . . For 



34 6 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

some years he has provided for the maintenance of a native 
missionary to preach to the people of his own village in China. 
Association with Christians is a delight to him. When he 
stood up to receive the right hand of fellowship on admission 
into the church, the pride and satisfaction with which he ac- 
cepted such high honor were visible in his entire bearing. At 
the next communion, when other members were to be received, 
Wong innocently took his place in the line again. Though an 
unusual thing to repeat the ceremony, w r e did not pass him by. 
'How I like this church! They shake hands every month.' 
said he. Certainly we ought to merit his encomium by more 
hearty and unfailing good fellowship with those who come 
among us. 

" At the last four occasions of admitting members into the 
church a Chinaman was among the number each time. Notic- 
ing this with surprise and gratification, we said, ' Wong, isn't 
it remarkable that we have had a Chinaman on each of the 
last four Sundays?' With the most radiant look he replied, 
' Not at all remarkable. I asked the Lord for ten this year ; 
you have got four of them. Hold fast and you will get the 
other six before the year is over.' O Chinaman, I have not 
found so great faith, no, not among our American Christians! 

" It is touching and cheering to hear them pray and sing and 
expound Scripture and exhort one another, all in such fervent 
and orderly manner, in their own weekly prayer-meetings, A 
few of these expositions will illustrate the sincerity and intelli- 
gence of their Christianity. 

" Yeung, in a prayer-meeting talk on ' The Word of God is 
not Bound,' said : ' The Word of God binds ; it is not bound. 
We were astray, alienated from God. It bound us back to him. 
It binds our lives by its influence. Bind the Word of God? 
The Bible says it is a sword. Can you bind a sword? Will it 
not cut through the cords you attempt to bind it with ? Bind 
the Word of God? The Bible calls it light. Can you bind 



FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS 347 

light? Will it regard your cords and fetters? Can you keep it 
in a room? Can you keep it from shining? It will penetrate 
everywhere The gospel will spread ; man cannot prevent it. 
Bind a sword, bind light ; then may you bind the Word of 
God.' 

" Cheung Yule P'eng said : 'When a man and wife have been 
married for eight or ten years without having any children, and 
at last a child comes, they are full of joy. But if, after a while, 
they find that the child is deaf or lame or blind or dumb, their 
joy is turned to sorrow. So when I hear of baptisms now and 
then — six or eight joining the church — I am rejoiced. But 
alas! sometimes my joy is weakened and I am filled with 
sorrow. Why? Some of these members are dumb or blind 
or deaf or lame. How? Why, when a man becomes a 
Christian and doesn't speak to others about Jesus he is dumb ; 
when a Christian doesn't read his Bible he is blind ; when he 
will not listen to advice and instruction, or when he sleeps in 
church, he is deaf; when he neglects the meetings of the 
brethren and fails to come to church on the Lord's days he is 
lame. I rejoice to hear of baptisms, but how often converts 
disappoint our hopes and turn out but blind or deaf or dumb 
or lame children! ' " 

The local missions of the church included, in addition to the 
work among Jews and Chinese, a mission for colored people, 
which became in time self-sustaining ; the work of the Indus- 
trial Home, administered largely by members of the Clarendon 
Street Church ; an important rescue work for women ; the vari- 
ous evangelistic enterprises of the young people at the wharves, 
car stables, and hospitals; and the evangelistic work of the 
deacons in weak churches. To the participation in foreign 
work reference has already been made. In addition to the 
support tendered the missions of the denomination, an inde- 
pendent mission in Corea was organized by a member of the 
church, with five workers in the field. This number is to be 



34 8 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

increased shortly. On the walls of the vestry, where the 
prayer-meetings are held, are inscribed the names of mission- 
aries and evangelists connected with the church. The number 
varies from time to time, averaging anywhere from ten to 
twenty. 

Thus was the church transformed, until the formal, self- 
contained congregation had become " a little kingdom of God 
in itself/' unobtrusive, but none the less aggressive in its mul- 
tifarious religious agencies. It had now been brought into a 
condition of spiritual equipment and organization ; new motives 
had replaced the old. The saving of souls had taken the pre- 
eminent place. The birth of this new ideal had been with 
much labor and toil, but its development was the salvation 
of the church. For twenty-five years this purpose was em- 
phasized week after week. In an address at Minneapolis, 
in 1887, Dr. Gordon drew a contrast, which is strikingly sug- 
gestive to one who reads between the lines, of the life of old 
and new Clarendon Street : " Ask social scientists concerning 
the perils which threaten our republic, and among these they 
will mention the out-populating power of the foreign races. 
They tell us that negro and Celt are multiplying so rapidly that 
there is danger that our native stock may be swallowed up by 
them. And as the counterpart to this, they admonish us that 
the Americans, as they grow rich and aristocratic, evade the 
responsibilities of child-bearing, and so put the Saxon and 
Puritan stock to a constant disadvantage in the competition of 
races. I mention this only that I may dwell upon the analogous 
spiritual fact. As soon as Zion travailed she brought forth 
children. It is the law of God that renewed souls should come 
forth through the birth-pangs of prayer and faith in the church 
of Christ. But the tendency is for the church, as soon as it 
becomes wealthy and aristocratic, to shirk the responsibilities 
of child-bearing, preferring the luxuries of worship, the music, 
the oratory, and the architecture of an elegant sanctuary, to 



FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS 349 

the bringing forth and nursing of children. Fashionable religion 
frowns on prayer-meeting exhortations as sanctified baby talk, 
and on simple gospel preaching as weak pulpit milk, and on 
lifting the hand and rising for prayers as nursery exercises in 
which cultivated Christians do not care to engage. But the 
church that knows its calling as the mother and nurse of souls 
will use all these things because God has enjoined milk for 
babes, and the rudiments of faith for children. All honor to 
the church that accepts the function of child-bearing and 
nursing ; but no honor to that church which prefers barrenness 
to maternity in order that she may be at ease in Zion. May 
God save us from this temptation, which culture and social 
position are constantly forcing upon us. It is the certain 
precursor of doctrinal unsoundness as well as of spiritual blight. 
I can look out upon scores of churches in my own city, planted 
in orthodoxy but now fallen from the faith, and I find that 
their history for the most part verifies this maxim. Their 
doctrinal looseness began in spiritual laziness; it was when 
they ceased to bring forth children that they began to bring 
forth heresies. ,, 

" Christianity is both a cement and a solvent," says Vinet. 
The preaching of spiritual truths and the insistence on spiritual 
methods had a sifting effect, the results of which were twofold. 
The restless, the worldly, the unfriendly, gradually dropped off 
and went elsewhere. This was in some ways a great relief to 
the pastor. Indeed, during a period of friction he prayed 
earnestly a whole summer long for the departure of a leading 
member whose presence he felt to be fatal to the church's best 
interests. In the autumn this man left in a most unexpected 
way without trouble or irritation. On the other hand, there 
gathered around the church a large clientele of earnest, devout 
souls, whose views of church life corresponded with those set 
forth from the pulpit. Hundreds were converted, too, bringing 
with them the vigor which goes with fresh and powerful reli- 



35° ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

gious experiences. For this was no church built up by attract- 
ing the comfortable and well dressed from other churches with 
oratory and subtle, dexterous rhetoric. There was here no 
flinching from the hard realities, no avoidance of uncomfortable 
truths and unpopular causes, no magnanimous (though sophis- 
tical) tolerance of all parties and all beliefs however opposed 
they might be. Into these walls were built all manner of re- 
jected material— the drunkard, the outcast, the vagabond, the 
opium-slave. As the sun distils and draws to itself from the 
vilest tarn the fleeciest clouds, so the Spirit of God carried on 
his redeeming work in Clarendon Street Church. The impulses 
gained vitalized, too, the Baptist churches of eastern Massa- 
chusetts. For years Clarendon Street stood as a religious 
clearing-house between the city and surrounding towns. Young 
people from the country and from the Provinces would spend 
five or ten years here, and then, when married, go to establish 
homes about suburban churches — stanch, reliable men and 
women with the stamp of the city church upon them. 

Let us go into the church of the nineties. Here is no 
longer a select congregation of pewholders. No longer do 
the humming-birds of fashion flit up the aisles. No longer 
does the usher distribute strangers with furtive glances at the 
numberless gaps in the congregation. Now the rich and the 
poor meet together; the Lord is the Maker of them all. 
We are upborn by the weighty sense which a great concourse 
of people gives, especially of people of like interests and 
motives, of a unanimity of life and spirit. A noble type of 
Christianity is regnant in these hearts. What cordiality, what 
affection, what mutual forbearance and assistance among the 
members! John Stuart Mill remarked cynically that it could 
hardly be said now, as it was said by those of pagan Rome, 
" Behold how these Christians love one another." Yet this 
could be claimed without exaggeration of the people whom 
Gordon left behind him in the church of his training. For 




Clarendon Street Church. 



FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS 351 

had he not explained to them the source of unity and love? 
" ' If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that 
they shall ask/ " said he, quoting our Lord's own words, " ' it 
shall be done for them.' That word ' agree ' is a beautiful 
one in the original, meaning to be in symphony or musical 
accord. But it is not possible for two to be in holy agreement 
among themselves unless each is attuned to a third, the Holy 
Comforter. The harp strings must be keyed to a common 
pitch in order to chord with each other." 

How were these deep and comprehensive changes effected? 
Not with struggling, but in quietness and peace. Reforms 
were waited for in prayerful patience when opposition arose. 
Conferences were held for the deepening of the spiritual life. 
Week after week, year after year, the most spiritual truths were 
presented to the people. The steel was turned and wrought 
and tempered. Like the Japanese sword-smith who spends 
a lifetime on a daimio's single blade, Gordon worked at his 
church for twenty-five long years. No wonder it became an 
effective instrument. He loved his people. When at home 
he bound them to him by the tenderest ministries, at the side 
of the sick, comforting the bereaved, burying the dead. When 
away he wrote frequently to them. 

" I am resting powerfully, and have much time for com- 
munion and quiet talking with the Lord," he writes. " I feel 
that my busy and hurried life in Boston robs me too much of 
this. How much we need the times of refreshing to fit us for 
toil, lest we become mere superficial and routine servants ! . . . 
I have written to many in the parish, having time now to think 
of all their wants and sorrows, and all I wish to say to them 
by way of exhortation. So that I have written long letters 
and am going to write scores more." 

And again : " I am using great diligence in the midst of 
my country work in writing letters to such as need a word of 
comfort or counsel. Yet I begin to feel quite anxious to get 



35 2 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

back again to my parish, and to all the interests and labors 
that are so dear to me. I cannot entirely cast off the burden 
of it, even while so far away, but am constantly sending back 
my desires and longings toward those whom God has given 
me to watch over and care for. I really desire, above all things, 
to go back to a more devoted ministry for the good of souls." 

In the fragment of spiritual autobiography published after 
his death Gordon describes this metamorphosis, this passage 
of his church from pupa to imago. 

" ' Why not withdraw from the church which has become 
thus secularized and desecrated ? * it is asked. To which we 
reply emphatically, ' Until the Holy Spirit withdraws we are not 
called upon to do so.' And he is infinitely patient, abiding 
still in his house so long as there are two or three who gather 
in Christ's name to constitute a tcmplwn in templo, a sanctuary 
within a sanctuary, where he may find a home. 

" What the lungs are to the air the church is to the Holy 
Spirit ; and each individual believer is like a cell in those lungs. 
If every cell is open and unobstructed the whole body is full 
of light ; but if, through a sudden cold, congestion sets in, so 
that the larger number of these cells are closed, then the entire 
burden of breathing is thrown upon the few which remain un- 
obstructed. With redoubled activity these now inhale and 
exhale the air till convalescence shall return. So we strongly 
believe that a few Spirit-filled disciples are sufficient to save a 
church ; that the Holy Ghost, acting through these, can and 
does bring back recovery and health to the entire body. 

" Woe then to those who judge before the time ; who depart 
from their brethren and slam that door behind them before 
which Jesus is gently knocking ; who spue the church out of 
their mouths while he, though rebuking it, still loves it and 
owns it and invites it to sup with him. 

" ' For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made 
me free from the law of sin and death/ writes the apostle. This 



FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS 353 

is the method of the Lord's present work — death overcome by 
life. ' I cannot sweep the darkness out, but I can shine it out,' 
said John Newton. We cannot scourge dead works out of 
the church, but we can live them out. If we accuse the church 
of having the pneumonia, let us who are individual air-cells in 
that church breathe deeply and wait patiently and pray believ- 
ingly, and one after another of the obstructed cells will open 
to the Spirit, till convalescence is reestablished in every part. 

" With the deepest humility the writer here sets his seal of 
verifying experience. When the truth of the inresidence of 
the Spirit and of his presiding in the church of God became a 
living conviction, then began a constant magnifying of him in 
his offices. Several sermons were preached yearly, setting forth 
the privileges and duties of Christians under his administration ; 
special seasons of daily prayer were set apart, extending some- 
times over several weeks, during which continual intercession 
was made for the power of the Holy Ghost. It was not so 
much prayer for particular blessings as an effort to get into 
fellowship with the Spirit and to be brought into unreserved 
surrender to his life and acting. The circle of those thus pray- 
ing was constantly enlarged. Then gradually the result ap- 
peared in the whole church ; the incoming tide began to fill the 
bays and inlets, and as it did so the driftwood was dislodged 
and floated away. Ecclesiastical amusements dropped off, not 
so much by the denunciation of the pulpit as by the displace- 
ment of the deepening life. The service of song was quietly 
surrendered back to the congregation, and instead of the select 
choir, the church, who constitute the true Levites as w r ell as 
the appointed priesthood of the new dispensation, took up the 
sacrifice of praise anew and filled the house with their song. 
Later came the abolition of pew-rentals and the disuse of 
church sales for raising money for missions and other charities. 
The prayer-meeting soon passed beyond the necessity of being 
'sustained,' and became the most helpful nourisher and sus- 



354 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

tainer of the church. The pulpit, too, acquired a liberty 
hitherto unknown ; the outward hampering being removed, the 
inward help became more and more apparent, and the preacher 
felt himself constantly drawn out instead of being perpetually 
repressed, as in the olden time. So noiselessly and irresistibly 
as the ascending sap displaces the dead leaves which have clung 
all winter long to the trees, so quietly did the incoming Spirit 
seem to crowd off the traditional usages which had hindered 
our liberty." 






CHAPTER XXVI 

A SOWER WENT FORTH TO SOW 

Convention work in American cities — The convention of premillennial 
Baptists in Brooklyn— Dr. Gordon's address — Teaching on the Holy 
Spirit 

THE convention work which Gordon undertook increased 
yearly during the last half-decade of his life. We find 
notices of conferences in which he participated in Buffalo, 
Cincinnati, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, 
Springfield, Providence, Boston, Lawrence, Rochester, Detroit, 
the Canadian cities, and scores of minor points. 

" ' I laid me down and slept ; I awaked ; for the Lord sus- 
tained me/ " he writes on a postal from a "sleeper." "Am 
I not getting to be a traveling evangelist, an itinerant preacher, 
a peripatetic lecturer? It is all so contrary to my inclination, 
who would like so much better to settle down and to keep so. 
Well, the Lord would stir up my home-fixedness and beget in 
me the spirit of go-ye-forthedness. I trust I may do good to 
souls." 

Most of these conferences were organized in behalf of foreign 
missions. One of the more unique was the one called in 
Brooklyn by one hundred and fifty Baptist pastors, together 
with many more laymen, as a demonstration in behalf of the 
doctrine of the Lord's reappearing. Many of the leading men 
in the denomination took part, among others Professors Stifler 

355 



• 35 6 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

and Gilmore and Messrs. Haldeman, Needham, and A. C. 
Dixon. This important meeting was hardly noticed by the 
denominational press. Of Gordon's address at the conference 
the New York " Independent " said: 

"The church could hardly contain the crowds when Dr. 
Gordon spoke on the last night on the relation of Baptists to 
the doctrine of the Lord's second coming. He aimed to show 
that the doctrine of the premillennial advent has been the faith 
of the Baptists from the beginning, the cogent testimony of 
Professor Harnack and of Professor Briggs being cited as to 
the views of the Anabaptists and of the later English Baptists, 
further proof being adduced from the declarations of the 
Baptist confessions and Baptist confessors of several genera- 
tions. That it was a convention of remarkable power is con- 
ceded by all in attendance. Are the large Baptist company 
who originated and conducted it innovators or renovators? is 
a question for our Baptist brethren to settle." 

The question was settled once for all and in classical form 
by this address. The unbroken chain of traditional Baptist 
interpretation was traced from the records of the nameless, 
faithful Anabaptists of the Reformation to its representatives 
to-day. The three propositions which follow were defended 
with copious and convincing references to the history of the 
church. 

"i. That premillennialism was the orthodox faith of the 
church in the primitive and purest ages ; that it only began to 
be seriously discredited when the church passed under the 
shadow of the Roman apostasy, which threw all of the most 
vital truths of the gospel into eclipse ; that it was only partially 
revived at the Reformation, but for the last half-century has 
been reasserting itself with such power that it may be safely 
affirmed that nine tenths of the best European biblical scholar- 
ship now stands solidly for its defense. 

" 2. That the Baptists, because devoted to primitive Chris- 



A SOWER WENT FORTH TO SOW 357 

tianity, and holding to the literal interpretation of the Scrip- 
tures, have been from the beginning more constantly and pro- 
nouncedly identified with this doctrine than any of the re- 
formed sects ; embodying it more or less distinctly in several 
of their historical confessions, and proclaiming it by the mouth 
of many of their most eminent preachers and theologians. 

"3. These propositions being true, the Baptists would seem 
to be committed to the acceptance of the premillennial inter- 
pretation by precisely the same threefold consideration on 
which they defend their faith and practice as to the mode 
and subjects of baptism, viz., the voice of primitive Christianity, 
the principle of literal interpretation of Scripture, and the well- 
nigh unanimous consensus of critical scholarship, 

"After noting the gradual disappearance of chiliasm before- 
the advancing corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church, and 
after referring to the hidden stream of doctrine in which this 
primitive faith still flowed on, Professor Harnack explores this 
stream, and in doing so strikes at once ' the pure evangelical 
forces of the Anabaptists/ many of whom, he declares, ' need 
not shun comparison with the Christians of the apostolic and 
post-apostolic ages/ At the Reformation Luther and his 
coadjutors failed fully to revive this doctrine, for which the 
theologian Martensen expresses regret. But Harnack, refer- - 
ring to this fact, adds : ' Millenarianism, nevertheless, found its 
way with the help of the apocalyptic mysticism and Anabaptist 
influences into the churches of the Reformation.' ' Anabaptist 
influences ' — let the candid reader trace these and see how our 
ecclesiastical ancestors are haunted by the shadow of this pre- 
millennial faith, so odious to many of their sons. We have 
not room for detailed history, but we follow this shadow for a 
little. 

" Professor Briggs, of the Union Theological Seminary, with 
no evident liking for this doctrine, but with evident desire to 
rule it out of the Presbyterian camp, says : ' The confession of 



35 8 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

faith of the seven Baptist churches issued in 1645-46 gave ex- 
pression to premillenarianism, and it became the especial doctrine 
of the English Baptists and Fifth Mo?iarchy Men.'' (' Whither? ' 
p. 214.) One of our editors vehemently denies the exasperat- 
ing imputation, as though it were a slander upon our ecclesias- 
tical forefathers to connect them with this doctrine. But if the 
allegation is false, why has so competent an historian as Dr. 
William R. Williams made such an eloquent defense of the 
early Baptists on this point, not denying the charge, but justi- 
fying them under it? (' Lectures on Baptist History/ pp. 
157-159.) Then let us turn to the famous Confession of 1660,. 
to which more than twenty thousand English Baptists gave 
their assent. By writers of the highest authority on the ques- 
tion we find this document constantly quoted as chiliastic, one 
eminent author speaking of it as embodying ' the purest early 
patristic millenarian doctrine. 1 A single sentence from the • 
confession will show how little its framers anticipated the tri- 
umph of the church before Christ's return in glory, and how 
steadfastly they looked for his coming to usher in that triumph. 
In Article XXII. we read: 

" ' That the same Lord Jesus who showed himself alive after 
his passion by many infallible proofs, and who was carried up 
into heaven, shall so come in like manner as he was seen to 
go into heaven. And when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, 
we shall appear with him in glory. . . . Though now, alas! 
many men be scarce content that the saints should have so 
much as a being among them, but when Christ shall appear then 
shall be their day, then shall be given unto them poiver over the 
nations to rule them with a rod of iron. The?i shall they receive a 
crown of life which no man shall take from them, nor shall they 
by any means be turned or overturned from it, for the oppressor 
shall be broken to pieces. 1 

" If we turn from the confession to the confessors, the early 
faith of our co-religionists comes out even more strongly. John 



A SOWER WENT FORTH TO SOW 359 

Bunyan's millenarianism is well known and generally conceded. 
He maintained the early patristic view that the seventh millen- 
niad will be the Sabbath of the world, to be ushered in by the 
advent of Christ. (Works, vol. v., p. 286 ; vol. vi., p. 301.) One 
of Banyan's contemporaries — Benjamin Keach, an illustrious 
predecessor of Spurgeon in the pastorate— has left a very full 
confession of his views on this point. He was brought to trial 
October 8, 1664, on the two charges of Anabaptism and mil- 
lenarianism. As he stood before Lord Chief Justice Hyde, the 
representative of the state church, he was summoned first to an- 
swer for his.' damnable doctrine ' concerning baptism; which 
being disposed of, the second article of indictment was taken 
up, viz., that he held that i the saints shall reig?i with Christ a 
thousand years? The judge pronounced this 'an old heresy 
which was cast out of the church a thousand years ago, and 
was likewise condemned by the Council of Constance five 
hundred years after, and hath lain dead ever since, till now 
this rascal hath revived it.' Nevertheless the stalwart Baptist 
preacher firmly defended his view, bringing out clearly the 
doctrine of the first resurrection, followed by the millennium 
and the reign of the saints with Christ, and as the result he 
was condemned and sent to the pillory, where, standing all day 
with his accusation written over his head, he bade the specta- 
tors ' take notice that it is not for any wickedness I stand here, 
but for writing and publishing the truths which the Spirit of 
God hath revealed in the Holy Scriptures. , 

" Dr. John Gill, the commentator and theologian, has drawn 
out the premillennial scheme more fully and set forth the scrip- 
tural arguments for it more cogently, perhaps, than any other 
Baptist writer who has treated the subject. For a full state- 
ment of his views we must refer the reader to his ' Body of 
Divinity ' and his ' Commentary on Revelation.' Couple his 
testimony with that of Charles H. Spurgeon, who said, in a 
recent sermon, that there can be no millennium without the 



360 ADOKIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

presence of the visible Christ, 'any more than there can be 
summer without the sun. He must co?ne Jirst, and then will 
the golden age begin' Thus we have an illustrious trio of 
Baptist witnesses in a single pastoral succession — Keach, Gill, 
and Spurgeon. The teachings of these three great confessors 
would seem to shake the integrity of the assertion above 
quoted, that ' premillenarianism is no more an article of Baptist 
faith than is second probation/ 

" Perhaps this statement was intended to apply to American 
Baptists; well, we have to say that just as clearly as those 
founders of New England, the Mathers and the Davenports 
and the Walleys, were millenarians, so clearly were our Baptist 
fathers who were contemporary with them. 

" Hear Roger Williams's unequivocal utterance on the per- 
sonal and imminent advent of our Lord. ' It is the counsel 
of God,' he says, ' that Jesus Christ shall shortly appear, a 
most glorious Judge and Revenger against all his enemies, 
while the heavens and the earth shall flee before his most 
glorious presence.' But what did Roger Williams believe as 
to the condition of things on earth at Christ's appearing? Did 
he hold to that ' from time immemorial ' Baptist doctrine, the 
conversion of the world previous to the second advent? Lis- 
ten to him again. 'The Lord will come when an evil world 
is ripe in sin and antichristianism ; will come suddenly, and 
then will he melt the earth with fire and make it new. Till 
then I wait and hope, and bear the dragon's wrath.' (' Bloudy 
Tenet,' 1644, pp. 32, 72, 73, 361.) Roger Williams, we need 
not remind our hearers, was driven into the wilderness before 
the face of the state church dragon. 

" His co-religionist, John Clarke of Newport, was con- 
demned to pay twenty-five pounds or be well whipped for 
his Baptist faith and practice, but escaped the penalty through 
the intervention of his friends. That Clarke was of those who 
1 come behind in no gift, waiting for the coming of the Lord,' 



A SOWER WENT FORTH TO SOW 361 

is evident from his testimony, recorded in his confession of 
faith and delivered to the magistrates of Boston, 165 1. In 
this confession he speaks of ' the anointed King who is gone 
unto his Father for his glorious kingdom, and shall ere long 
return again ' ; and identifies himself with those who ' wait for 
his coming the second time in the form of a Lord and King, 
with his glorious kingdom, according to promise.' (Backus, 
'History of New England,' 187 1, vol. i., pp. 182, 183.) 

" Obadiah Holmes, who was scourged in Boston for his 
Baptist teaching and practice, receiving thirty lashes with a 
three-corded whip, drew up a confession of his faith in 1675 
for the information of friends in England who had misjudged 
him. The doctrines of the coming of Christ, the conversion 
of Israel, and the millennial reign are stated as clearly by 
Holmes Martyr in the seventeenth century as by Justin 
Martyr in the second. I quote from his confession : 

" ' S3- I believe the promise of the Father concerning the 
return of Israel and Judah, and the coming of the Lord to 
raise up the dead in Christ, and to change them that are alive, 
that they may reign with him a thousand years. 

" ' 34. I believe in the resurrection of the wicked to receive 
their just judgment. 

"'35. As I believe in eternal judgment to the wicked, so 
I believe the glorious declaration of the Lord, " Come, ye 
blessed of my Father, enter into the joy of your Lord ;" which 
joy eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither can it enter 
into the heart of man to conceive the glory that God hath 
prepared for them that do love him and wait for his appear- 
ance ; wherefore come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. In this faith 
and profession I stand, and have sealed the same with my 
blood, in Boston, in New England.' 

" I think we must conclude from these quotations that 
millenarianism was the martyr faith of our denomination, 
even though it may not be the modern faith. The fact is 



362 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

that this primitive doctrine of the church has always tended 
to reappear with a fresh planting of the gospel and in a revival 
of spiritual religion. It is just as true that when the church has 
entered upon a career of worldly prosperity the tendency has 
been to repudiate this apostolic faith as antiquated, pessimis- 
tic, and out of joint with the times. This sentence, in which 
the church historian, Kurtz, accounts for the decline of the 
early doctrine of the Lord's coming and his reign, is very sig- 
nificant. He says : ' As the church saw herself now entering 
upon an extended career of worldly prosperity, her early mil- 
lennial hopes passed into oblivion.' Possibly we to-day may 
be unconsciously repeating that early experience. Think of 
Holmes whipped in Boston and Williams banished into the 
wilderness for avowing the Baptist faith ; and then come down 
two centuries to find the once despised Baptist sect grown to 
be the largest Protestant body in Boston, and the second larg- 
est in the Union, with its three million communicants, its great 
universities, its large endowments, and its millionaire mer- 
chant-, some of whom stand ready to be as munificent patrons 
to it as Constantine was to the church of his age! What 
wonder that he seems to strike a discordant note in the Te 
Deum of our prosperity who intrusively takes up the words of 
the apostle, ' Here we have no continuing city.' ' For our 
citizenship is in heaven ; from whence we also look for the Sav- 
iour, the Lord Jesus Christ.' " 

In his advocacy of Jesus' teaching on this point, Dr. Gor- 
don was much opposed, especially by the ministry. In the 
memorable Canadian missionary tour many came to him and 
urged him to refrain from references to the second coming of 
Christ, that offense might not be given. Upon this fact he 
adverts in a letter from one of the Canadian cities in which 
he was speaking : 

" While standing at a street corner last evening," he says, 
" waiting for a car, a Salvation Army band came along, and 



A SOWER WENT FORTH TO SOW ^3 

then a poor redeemed man took off his hat and spoke to the 
crowd. It was so pathetic, so true, so correct in its gospel 
preaching, that it won all our hearts. I think I could not have 
resisted it had I been unconverted. Thank God for the Sal- 
vation Army. ... I am stopping with a lovely family of 
Scotch people, full of interest in missions and clear in the 
truth, wanting me so much to go and give a message on the 
Lord's coming ; and yet the ministers are opposed to it. Is 
it not humiliating that in so many cases the flock has to lead 
the shepherds? " 

While emphasizing powerfully these much-neglected doc- 
trines, he dwelt equally upon the fact that the Spirit abides 
here in this dispensation, the source of energy for all Christian 
ministrations. 

His interest in this theme was not altogether new. There 
is much about it in " The Twofold Life," a book to which the 
president of a leading New England college has expressed his 
profound indebtedness, and which, on the other hand, of all 
the volumes in the library of the Vermont State Prison, was, 
some years ago, the favorite among the convicts, being read 
and re-read until it fell apart and disappeared. It was in Dr. 
Gordon's last years, however, that he dwelt upon the doctrine 
with especial stress. He realized how slightly informed Chris- 
tians were on the subject. His own views were maturing and 
deepening. He was, too, experiencing personally the presence 
of the Spirit as he climbed steadily to the table-lands of the 
higher life. From the nebula of convention addresses, ser- 
mons and articles was developed gradually a system in which 
" The Ministry of the Spirit " holds a central place, " The Holy 
Spirit in Missions " and " How Christ Came to Church " being 
dependent and tributary to it. The first and last of these 
books were published posthumously. Many think that in 
them Gordon did for his day what John Owen, the Puritan, 
in the " Discourse Concerning the Spirit," did for his. " He 



364 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

brought up," says a competent authority,* " from the debris of 
the past the apostolic doctrine of the Holy Spirit's personality, 
deity, and actual presidency in the assembly of the saints, and 
gave it increased emphasis for a decade of years." 

Insistence on the importance of the Spirit's ministry has 
been the glory of Quakerism and the unquestionable reason 
for its preeminence in every form of good works. The dis- 
tortion of the doctrine, in the contention that " the Spirit which 
bloweth where it listeth " is confined to certain ecclesiastical 
channels, has proved the vigorous tap-root of an immoral 
clericalism.t The neglect into which the teaching has fallen 
explains the languor and debility so common in Protestant 
churches. " Of the Holy Ghost as a divine person, resident 
in the church, to be honored and invoked and obeyed and 
implicitly trusted, many Christians know nothing. Is it con- 
ceivable that there could be any deep spiritual life or any real 
sanctified energy for service in a community of such? "$ 

The Spirit he believed to be a definite personality, whose 
coming was announced by Jesus as distinctly as the latter's 
advent was foretold by prophets and angels. The upper room 
was his cradle, as the manger at Bethlehem was the cradle of 
the Son of God. His time ministry, "distinct from all that 
went before, and introductory to all that is to come after, a 
ministry with a definite beginning and a definite termination," § 

* Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. 

t ' ' In the doctrine of tactual succession there is not only a kind of cheap- 
ness and pettiness, but especially a foreshortening of the Spirit's arm as 
though the consecrating touch depended on the intervention of some visi- 
ble ecclesiastic. On the contrary, the hands of the Paraclete have often 
stretched across a century or generation and set apart an apostle by fore- 
ordination long before any bishop or presbyter has moved to set him apart 
by ordination." 

t " The Ministry of the Spirit," p. 73. 

§ Ibid., p. 15. 



A SOWER WENT FORTH TO SOW 365 

he thought as susceptible of biographic treatment as the earthly 
life of Jesus. 

'The work of the Spirit is preeminently to communicate 
and apply the work of Christ to human hearts. . . . The Son 
glorifies the Father ; the Spirit glorifies the Son. ... In the 
church two processes are in operation, one of life, the other of 
death. If either is interrupted disorder results. To effect this 
twofold operation, the daily death of the church in fulfilment 
of the crucified life of her Head, and her daily living in mani- 
festation of his glorified life, the Spirit dwells evermore with 
us." * His is the Real Presence. 

The specific method of the Spirit's work of vivification is 
indicated by three terms used in Scripture — sealing, filling, 
anointing. Each of these is connected with some special di- 
vine endowment; the seal with assurance, the filling with 
power, and the anointing with knowledge. "The contrast 
between working in the power of the Spirit and in the energy 
of the flesh is easily discernible. Even more so is the contrast 
between the tuition of learning and the intuition of the Spirit 
in knowledge and teaching." t 

" It costs much," said Dr. Gordon in one of these conven- 
tion addresses, " to obtain this power. It costs self-surrender 
and humiliation and the yielding up of our most precious 
things to God. It costs the perseverance of long waiting and 
the faith of strong trust. But when we are really in that 
power, we shall find this difference : that, whereas before it was 
hard for us to do the easiest things, now it is easy for us to do 
the hardest." 

And again: ''As we become deeply instructed in this mat- 
ter, we shall learn to pray less about the details of duty and 
more about the fullness of power. The manufacturer is chiefly 

* " The Ministry of the Spirit," pp. 63, 64. 
t Ibid., p. 90. 



366 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

anxious to secure an ample head of water for his mills ; and, 
this being found, he knows that his ten thousand spindles will 
keep in motion without particular attention to each one. It 
is, in like manner, the sources of our power for which we should 
be most solicitous, and not the results. " 

This doctrine of the baptism of the Spirit, it will be readily 
seen, articulates itself to his whole theory of man's status be- 
fore God. The implanted life of God alone can save man 
from moral decomposition. The expected return of Christ to 
earth is the one hope in the struggle for social redemption. 
The presence of the Spirit in the heart is the condition prece- 
dent to an acceptable witness for Christ by the regenerate 
until the day of that appearing. Everywhere does the New 
Testament declare the impotence of man and the sovereign 
sufficiency of God. 






CHAPTER XXVII 



TILL THE DAY DAWN 



Twenty-fifth anniversary of pastorate— Closing days— Sickness and death 
—The cries of bereavement— Funeral addresses 

ON the 27th of December, 1894, Gordon completed the 
twenty-fifth year of his pastorate in the Clarendon 
Street Church. The anniversary was observed by his people 
with appropriate exercises, a reception, and a tea, followed by 
addresses from his colleagues in the ministry of the city. The 
eulogy which ordinarily characterizes such occasions was re- 
butted by him in a brief speech, half humorous, half serious. 
He distributed the praise heaped on himself to his people and 
to his " splendid cabinet of deacons," contending that the 
growth of a tree is due, not to its own excellences, but to the 
excellence of the soil at its roots, and that his only merit con- 
sisted in his staying so long where God had placed him and 
where conditions were so favorable. He reminded his hearers, 
on the other hand, of the danger which lay hid in all eulogy of 
one whose record was not closed, and of the possibility which 
shadowed himself as well as the great apostle of becoming a 
castaway on the dark seas of unfaithfulness. 

In the evening, while sitting with his wife at home, he took 
down the " Life of Andrew Bonar," which he had been read- 
ing, and, after commenting on the events of the day, opened to 
these words, saying, " Here is something which just expresses 
my feelings " : 

367 



368 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

" ' Last nights jubilee passed over very pleasantly in one 
way, but was to me at the same time very solemn and hum- 
bling. I see in the retrospect so much that was altogether 
imperfect and so much that was left undone. But it was a 
great gathering and most hearty on the part of all the friends 
who came. May the Lord save me from the danger that lurks 
under praise and laudation of friends. I had no idea that I 
had so many friends in so many parts, and that the Lord had 
been pleased to use me in so many ways. . . . The anniver- 
sary was carried through in a way that interested the people, 
but as for myself, when I returned home and sat in the even- 
ing alone I felt deep and bitter regret at the thought of my 
past. I think I felt what is meant by being ashamed before 
God, as Ezra expresses it. And all this was aggravated by 
the thought of all the immense kindness of the Lord to me 
and to mine. I have been thinking to-night that perhaps my 
next undertaking may be this, appearing at the judgment-seat 
of Christ when I give an account of my trading with my tal- 
ents. I wish to hide in the shadow of the Plant of Renown, 
and be found there when the Voice says, " Where art thou ?" ' " 

It was a singular suggestion, a strange premonition, as if he 
had caught a glimpse of the dark cloud on the distant horizon. 
Yet all the world was bathed in sunshine still. Children and 
grandchildren were gathered about his breakfast-table the next 
morning. With him, too, was his close friend, Dr. A. T. Pier- 
son, whose presence ever was as flint to steel. What raillery, 
what wit, what flow of anecdote that morning! Retort and 
repartee coruscated and sparkled. Twenty-seven admirable 
stories were jotted down afterward by an interested listener, 
just as birds are picked up by the game-dogs after an unusual 
shot. The following Sunday he preached as usual. The 
new year opened, with its round of engagements. Everything 
looked as if he were entering upon another cycle of usefulness, 
even larger and more fruitful than the one just closed. 



TILL TLIE DAY DAWN 369 

There were, however, indications of a coming break, as of 
a straining beam upon which additional pressure is being con- 
stantly placed. His work during the month of January was 
continuous and intense. One might almost have believed that 
he was trying to illustrate the proverb, " The more light a torch 
gives, the less time it burns." An idea of his ceaseless activity 
can be obtained from a mere catalogue of his engagements 
for the brief two weeks of the sickness which followed. He 
was to give addresses at Philadelphia, at Newark, at the mid- 
winter convention of Dr. Cullis's church, at the conference of 
the Christian Alliance, Boston, at Mount Holyoke College, 
and two addresses at Rochester, N. Y. This in addition to 
his church cares at home. " I must get out from under these 
burdens for a little," he would say. Yet when suggestions 
were offered and plans perfected for rest he could never be 
induced to stop. His system was thus depleted and prepared 
for the entrance of the disease which was to prove fatal. 

Monday, January 21st, was his last day of service. In the 
evening he attended the annual meeting of the Industrial 
Home, and went thence to address the Young Men's Baptist 
Union on the subject of missions. Never did he speak with 
more delicate humor, with more captivating grace, with greater 
earnestness ; but the lines were deep on his face, as if the graver 
overwork had been more active than ever, and those who sat 
near could clearly see that he was far from well. The next 
day he was unable to leave his bed. The physician was called 
and the disease pronounced to be grippe, with tendencies to 
bronchitis. Then for days did he struggle on as in a blinding 
storm. The fever became violent and was accompanied with 
intermittent delirium. Night after night he lay in the agonies 
of a prolonged insomnia. He complained of " the ceaseless 
storm, the incessant noise as of great raindrops on a window- 
pane," though all the while the air outside was as still as an 
Indian summer. He would groan at " the sudden bursts of 



37° ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

blackness " which overwhelmed him "as if he were felled with 
a club to the ground." Often in those night hours could we 
hear him whispering John Angelus' hymn : 

"Jesus, Jesus, visit me; 

How my soul longs after thee! 
When, my best, my dearest friend, 
Shall our separation end? " 

For with all the intense physical suffering there went along 
a sense of isolation and of desertion. On the Wednesday night 
before his death this feeling seemed to be overpowering. He 
asked that every one might leave the room that he might be 
alone and face to face with Jesus. Then followed such a 
heartrending confession of unworthiness, such an appeal for 
the presence and companionship of the Saviour, such promises, 
with strong crying and tears, of renewed consecration, of 
greater diligence and devotion in God's service, as are rarely 
heard. It was as if the Gethsemane prayer were again 
ascending. 

Conscious of his condition and with a presentiment of the 
approaching end he called his wife to his side and said, " If 
anything should happen, do not have a quartet choir ; I have 
selected four hymns I want su?ig by the people. Write them 
down : ' Abide with me/ ' The sands of time are sinking,' 
' Lord, if he sleep he shall do well,' ' My Jesus, I love thee.' " 
This was done, to his apparent relief. 

The next morning it was clear that he was worse. The 
long period of sleeplessness was fast wearing him out. To- 
ward evening the doctor, coming in, said in a cheery voice, to 
rouse him from his lethargy, " Dr. Gordon, have you a good 
word for us to-night?" With a clear, full voice he answered, 
"Victory!" It was as if, after the typhoon-like sickness, he 
had passed the last range of breakers and had been given a 
glimpse of the Eternal City gleaming beyond. 



TILL THE DAY DAWN 371 

This was his last audible utterance. Between nine and ten 
in the evening the nurse motioned to his wife that she was 
wanted. As she bent over him he whispered, " Maria, pray." 
She led in prayer; he scarce followed sentence by sentence, 
trying at the close to utter a petition for himself; but his 
strength was not sufficient for articulation. 

Five minutes after midnight on the morning of February 2d 
he fell asleep in Jesus. In a few minutes the solemn tolling 
from the belfry of the church apprised his people that their 
pastor and friend was gone. The stars in the dark sky looked 
down calmly as ever. The crunching of the snow outside 
under an occasionally passing team alone broke the silence as 
the chamber door was closed upon the still form, tenantless 
now " until the morning breaks and the shadows flee away." 

That night the wires carried to thousands the message of 
bereavement. With the morning the returning replies of a 
sorrowing sympathy began to pour in. First came scores of 
yellow envelops — brief, heart- wrung exclamations from those 
who could not wait to write ; then a flood of letters from near 
points, widening out as the days passed, until every State and 
Territory was represented. With the mails from beyond the 
sea came the same words— from England, from France, from 
Cape Colony, from Brazil, from the West Indies, from India, 
from Japan. " All the religious papers from Sweden," wrote 
a Kansas Swede, " have dwelt upon our loss." Finally, weeks 
after, messages of sorrow arrived from the lonely mission 
stations far up the river- ways of Africa and from the extreme 
western provinces of China. " We have been holding a me- 
morial service here in Yachow [Szechuen] for him," wrote a 
missionary. It was only one among many such. 

What a revelation of love this vast pile of letters constituted! 
What utterances of grief, what acknowledgments of indebted- 
ness, it contained! "Oh, how we loved him!" "How I 
honored and revered him!" "He was Great-heart to us 



37 2 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

poor pilgrims." "The loss is paralyzing." "We are dazed 
with sorrow." " O my friend! " * " The loss is almost irrep- 
arable." " We are heartbroken." " The loss to the world is 
past telling." " My dear benefactor is gone." " ' Help, Lord ; 
for the godly man ceaseth ; for the faithful fail from among the 
children of men.' " " I loved him as I did no other man." 
" His influence for good has been incalculable." " Dear, 
dear Gordon! I loved him dearly, and always have. Faith 
is hardly equal to this. How can he be spared!" "I never 
knew one more transparent and more lovable." " He was the 
whole world's good friend." " He was a living conscience to 
the city." " There are many of us who owe to him more than 
we can ever tell." " All that was truly dear to me in Boston 
seems gone. We sorrow most of all that we shall see his dear 
face no more." " I never met him but I learned to love him." 
" I bless God that I ever knew him." " I thank God for that 
perfect life, that simple, childlike, pure spirit which has strength- 
ened me in the most holy faith." " I have never seen him, but 
for twenty years I have been indebted to him as to no other 
minister." " O man greatly beloved!" "'0 my father, my 
father! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof.'" 
"Would God I had been more worthy of his companionship. 
I must try now to be more like him." " I am almost pros- 
trated, for I can never forget his kindness to us in affliction." 
" No other departure of any man or any ten men, save of my 
own sons, could have stirred me so to the depths." " I can- 
not put language into form that would describe the stricken 
sense under which we suffer here at the news." "The great- 
est and truest saint it has been my privilege to know!" " I 
never spoke to him but once ; yet I think of him as a brother." 
" Express to the children my sense of thankfulness for a share 
of their dear father's love, of grief at his removal, of determi- 

* A single exclamation on a sheet of paper sent from some train flying 
through the night far away in the West. 






TILL TILE DAY DAWN 373 

nation to follow with them in his footsteps." " I can scarcely 
realize that I shall not look again on that noble countenance. " 
" God help us! No human being can! What are we to do 
without him? " " How we loved him! He was the Apostle 
John of our day." " He loved the drunkard as well as the 
moralist." * " So great is the loss that I have been wishing 
I could have accepted the ' enemy's ' summons if thereby he 
could have been spared." " We shall not be able to get along 
through life without him." t " His genius, his simplicity, his 
modesty, his bravery, his evangelical fervor, his firm adhesion 
to the gospel of Christ, his unity of life, have given him an in- 
comparable place in our hearts." " He was the rarest and 
most Christ-like spirit I have ever known." " I went to bed 
last night and remained awake a long time weeping before 
the Lord. I truly loved him." " When I received word of 
his death I immediately left my office, went to my home ; then 
had prayers with my wife. After which we spake of the loss 
to God's Zion. I am homesick for heaven" 

The funeral occurred on the following Tuesday. All 
through that winter morning a great concourse passed tear- 
fully and slowly by the casket. Men were sobbing convulsively 
like children. Strange faces in great numbers of the poor and 
of the meanly clad there were— a significant reminder of much 
that the right hand had hid from the left. A group of Chinese 
members were observed weeping in a corner of the vestry. 
One of them, a poor laundryman, when told that flowers were 
refused, laid three dollars upon the coffin for the preaching of 
the gospel of the resurrection among his countrymen. " Dr. 
Gordon would have wished it," he said. The suggestion was 
taken up, and a large sum was immediately subscribed by the 
young people of the church for a memorial missionary fund. 

* From a reformed man. 

t From a misspelled letter evidently from some humble one whom he 
had helped. 



374 AD ONI RAM JUDSON GORDON 

At one o'clock the casket was brought upstairs and placed 
in the spot where monthly for twenty-five years the dead pas- 
tor had poured wine and broken bread to his flock in the com- 
munion feast. The church was filled to its utmost capacity 
and hundreds regretfully turned homeward from the closed 
doors. Outside the wind cut like a sand-blast and the snow 
wraiths tore circling through the streets ; for it was the coldest 
day of winter. 

A deep sense of awe and of subdued triumph seemed to 
have taken the place of outpouring grief. The crowding 
memories of his life were to the multitudes, as his living pres- 
ence in the death-chamber had so often been, " a cup of 
strength in the great agony." The towering floods of anguish 
were held back as by the very hand of Jehovah, so that we 
passed through that afternoon dry-shod. It was not " the dark 
day of nothingness." The heavens had opened and a vision 
of victory had been vouchsafed. Never was faith more con- 
vinced ; never were " those mighty hopes that make us men " 
more potent. On that day all in the vast gathering realized 
with more than intuition that the dead had reached the blessed 
goal, that Christ had reached him out the shining hand. 

The singing was pervaded with a solemn power. Grief 
and triumph had here their common outlet, flowing commin- 
gled in an unhindered tide. Every soul in the house seemed 
to be singing, and the sound was as the noise of many waters. 
What a vindication of congregational music! How spectral 
the singing of the conventional quartet would have seemed 
after those mighty billows of sound thundering along with the 
inspired words of Samuel Rutherford!* 

Four of the dead man's comrades spoke for him that day. 
Dr. Henry C. Mabie represented the missionary interests for 
which he toiled ; President Andrews, of Brown University, 
recalled the old days and the alma mater he had served in 

* '* The sands of time are sinking," etc. 



TILL THE DAY DAWN 375 

later years ; Joseph Cook, his unswerving fidelity to Christian 
truth and his unfaltering championship of struggling causes ; 
and Dr. Pierson the labors at Northfield and the many cam- 
paigns through which they went together. 
The addresses were in part as follows : 

" It has been deemed fitting that one of the representatives 
of the American Baptist Missionary Union, associated with 
Dr. Gordon in a far-reaching form of foreign mission enter- 
prise, should say a few words in connection with this service — 
that he should speak a word concerning Dr. Gordon's relation 
to missions. If I were to express it in one word, I should say 
that Dr. Gordon's interest in missions was integral; it entered 
into his very spiritual personality ; it was but the natural breath- 
ing and outcome of his being ; it was no form of service that 
was put on as a garment, no perfunctory performance, no 
line of duty taken up because he had been elected to fill some 
official position. Missions with him, as with the God who in- 
stituted them and with Jesus Christ his Son, who by his atone- 
ment made them possible, were constitutional. He could no 
more think of missions as geographically limiting his thoughts, 
his heart, his life, his enterprise, than you could think of there 
being limits to the sympathies of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

" He was naturalized to all Christ's work. To him that 
work was a circle, not an arc. It was globed. Hence he 
was as much at home in alien cities as in his own Boston, at 
the World's Missionary Conference in London as some of us 
saw him — easily king of missionaries as he was imperial among 
pleaders for missions, the one man without whom no single 
session was thought complete till they had heard his voice. 
Hence it was that in Edinburgh and Glasgow and throughout 
Scotland he was welcomed everywhere, and fitted into the re- 
lations and voiced the missionary interest of these people just 
as naturally as if he were addressing his own prayer-meeting 



376 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

here in Clarendon Street Church. So their testimony was, 
1 He fed us with the finest of the wheat* He enlarged their 
horizon in respect to the world and gave them a relish for its 
conquest. Hence it was that in Paris, with the McAll Mis- 
sion workers, he was not only welcomed, but eagerly sought 
for, cabled for; they must have him, and for them he crossed 
the seas again and again. Hence it was that in our own land 
he was sought on all platforms where missions were to have a 
peculiar and effective advocacy. Hence it was that the stu- 
dent volunteer movement, the great conferences at Northfield 
and Ocean Grove and elsewhere, regarded his presence and 
his addresses as indispensable. Hence his favor for the Sal- 
vation Army movement, which he commended and cheered 
when almost all men set it at naught. Hence it was that in 
the stables of street-car drivers, on the wharves along the 
shore in Boston, or in refuges of the lost, he was everywhere 
welcomed as the supporter, advocate, and brother, vitally 
linked with all these organizations of any and every name. 

" But who shall tell what our beloved brother was to the 
American Baptist Missionary Union — our counselor, our in- 
spiration, our pride ; none so meek as he. I may be allowed 
to say, without disparagement to any one, that all through his 
official relations to that body, through so many weary years 
in our committee-rooms in this city, he often surrendered opin- 
ions of his own respecting ways and means in deference to his 
brethren, whom he was always ready to think of as more to 
be considered than himself. He was always ready to take the 
field for us, and was the bulwark of that organization. How 
this noble church has stood by him and followed him, till at 
length they only wanted to know his thought and they would 
anticipate it ! There was with him no pulling of people's door- 
bells to extract from them unwilling offerings; no passing 
around nervously, hat in hand, to beg for Peter's pence ; but 
rather a quiet exaltation of the lofty privilege of giving and a 



TILL THE DAY DAWN 377 

reminder of the blood mortgage on all men to redeem the 
world. . . . 

" History in its ongoings, as Dr. Gordon viewed it, was 
missionary history. He was not a man sailing over a track- 
less deep without chart or compass, with no desired haven in 
view. History was not to him a confused mass of incidents, 
as it is to the materialistic thinker of our day— an insoluble 
riddle, a hopeless tangle. The history of the world, as he 
viewed it, started from a beginning, and went on through the 
middle to the end in an orderly way, and the end was a glori- 
ous and divine consummation. The one last word that es- 
caped his lips was ' Victory V He believed that this was as- 
sured in history. His faith swept the entire perspective, and 
hence it was that he saw great mountain-peaks in that won- 
drous landscape where some of us, perhaps, see only hillocks, 
if we see even these. His view of history was simply the suc- 
cessive stages of the plan of human redemption, with its glori- 
ous culmination. 

" If some thought at times that his view of proper mission 
work was superficial or pessimistic, I bid them think again. 
If some think that he emphasized unduly what he regarded as 
the great and immediate duty of the church in this present 
age, viz., to preach the gospel r for a witness] let them think 
how long, how ardently, how profoundly he pondered the 
words of the Lord, for his words they are: 'This gospel of 
the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness 
unto all nations, and then shall the end come.' What Dr. 
Gordon meant by the ' witnessing ' is not that superficial post- 
boy, flash-light method of Christian enterprise which some 
imagine. What it is let his own tremendously earnest and 
concentrated efforts, which burned out the fires of this life, 
testify. He meant all that Jesus Christ meant when he said, 
' To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the 
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.' Christ's 



37 8 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDOX 

personal ministry, from the manger to the throne, he believed 
to be but a witness ; the beginnings of things, not the consum- 
mation of them ; the foundations only of the eternal king- 
dom that God was to rear. He meant all that the Apostle 
Paul meant when he spoke of his consummate privilege ' to 
testify the gospel of the grace of God/ " 

"Dear Friends: I do not consider it profitable that I 
should say much on a solemn occasion like this, for I stand 
here in an official relation. Were I to speak personally, de- 
tailing the knowledge I had of this good man, it would take 
more time than I have any right to occupy. Dr. Gordon was 
a graduate of Brown University. He graduated in the class 
of i860, and he was a light in that class. He was very dearly 
beloved by his classmates. Quite early in his ministry to 
this congregation he was chosen to be a member of the 
governing board of Brown University, and I cannot tell you 
how faithful he has always been in that relation. He not only 
attended the meetings whenever possible — and the occasions 
when it was not possible were very few — but he entered 
warmly into all matters brought before the board. He always 
showed an uncommon grasp of the college's business matters, 
keeping them in mind from one year's session to another. I 
felt very proud of Dr. Gordon on this account. He was 
mainly engaged in spiritual work, but he was never so lost in 
it that he was not able to take up any necessary temporal de- 
tails. I believe that the men most immersed in business also 
respected him on account of this quality. Not to speak fur- 
ther upon this, I wish to mention a line of Dr. Gordon's 
activity of which very few even in this church, even those very 
intimate with him, have been aware. He was accustomed to 
tear himself away from his toils here and run down to Brown 
University for a single day or more to assist in our services. 
Two or three times on these occasions it was absolutely indis- 



TILL THE DAY DAWN 379 

pensable that he should at night come back to Boston for some 
duty. He would then fly to Providence again and resume 
work. It is not every man — not even every good or every 
able man — who can touch the hearts of students. In all my 
acquaintance I have never met many— never more than two 
or three — who began to have the power in this sort of work 
that Dr. Gordon had. He never came to us without bringing 
a blessing, a large blessing, never without leaving behind him 
a permanent blessing. Never did he speak a word in our 
student body without so impressing many a student heart that 
the impress of that lesson must abide forever. It was my 
privilege during such visits within the last four or five years to 
become acquainted with Dr. Gordon personally as I was never 
acquainted with him before. I had often listened to his preach- 
ing, sometimes in this church, sometimes elsewhere, always 
with great delight ; and I had on a few occasions drawn near 
him to seek personal counsel. What multitudes could say the 
same ! Still, till the times to which I refer when he came to 
our college to address the students, I felt that I had not much 
personal acquaintance with him. Till then I never knew the 
immeasurable depth and breadth of his religious life ; but these 
visits revealed it. After the meetings were over and before he 
could take the train — sometimes, indeed, before the meetings 
— he would come to my house, where I had the privilege of 
conversing with him. I enjoyed a precious opportunity of 
this kind the very last time he came to us, in November, 1894. 
He preached to a large number of students, and personally 
prayed with some ; then he came to my house and we talked 
about many, many things. It would be impossible, even if 
we took this whole afternoon, to-night, to-morrow, and all the 
month, to go over all that you, the other friends of Dr. Gor- 
don, know about the immensity and grandeur of his religious 
life. . . . 

"I wish to lay emphasis also upon the amazing catholicity 



380 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

of this good brother in thinking of those who differed from 
him. I suppose that the man does not live — I suppose the 
man has never lived — who ever heard from Dr. Gordon's lips 
the first bitter or even reproachful word about any who did 
not agree with him. He went his way, he saw the light, he 
heard the call of our Lord Jesus Christ in the road before 
him. He followed, and he followed with absolute fearless- 
ness." 

" If I were at this moment on my death-bed, there is no 
preacher of my acquaintance w T ith whom I should more gladly 
consult, were he alive, than that one who has been snatched 
from us so recently, and who now knows what light is while 
we sit in the shadow. Were I a student beginning a course 
of theological study, there is no one to whom I should look 
for safer advice in comparing Scripture with Scripture than to 
that servant of God who in this city lived a biblical life and 
preached an unadulterated gospel. If I were commencing a 
career of advocacy of moral or social, industrial or even po- 
litical reforms, I do not know where I could find one who 
would be a more judicious guide than he would have been who 
was a warrior in his best days for many a noble reform, and who 
now lies dead on his shield on the field of battle. . . . 

" These three tests of a public career are the severest we can 
apply: Would we ask this man to give us advice when we 
take our leap into that unseen holy region into which all men 
haste? Would we follow him in our study of God's Word? 
Would we take him as an adviser in conflict with the evils of 
our day? I do unreservedly pray God that the mantle of this 
servant of his may fall on young theological students, may fall 
on young reformers, may fall on all who are preaching God's 
Word, may fall on all who knew him on either side the sea, 
may fall on the missions which he befriended to the very ends 
of the earth. Let us sorrow only for ourselves. All the 



TILL THE DAY DAWN 381 

mysteries of his providence God himself understands, and this 
ought to be enough for our peace. There are no broken 
columns in cathedrals that God builds — no unfinished arches. 

" It is as a reformer that some of us look to Dr. Gordon as 
one who could not be spared. We do not see his successor 
in the pulpit ; at least, not precisely his parallel. It would be 
hard to find a man who had such a grasp upon the confidence 
of the Christians of the United States, and who was as pro- 
nounced as he in advocating strong doctrines on the subject 
of the temperance reform. As a preacher he was first, midst, 
last, biblical. It would have amazed his audiences if he had 
often quoted the secular poets or illustrated his courses of 
thought by anecdotes of adventure of a secular kind, or if he 
had been in any way sensational in the bad meaning of that 
word. He was pungent. He was spiritually incisive. He 
held the sword of the Spirit, and was able to thrust it through 
and through the fabric of error, through and through even 
hard hearts. But if he quoted at all in his discourses, it was 
usually from the Puritan divines; it was from the deepest 
students of the inner life ; it was from the biographies of those 
saints of the modern and of the medieval and of the apostolic 
church who are canonized by the universal consent of Chris- 
tendom. And you feel that in their presence he was in com- 
pany fit for his own soul, and that his own was fit for this 
company. The astonishing thing to me in Dr. Gordon, when 
I heard him, was that he seemed to be one with Savonarola 
and with Wesley and with the Friends, who have spoken most 
effectively from the impulse of the inner voice. He was one 
with St. John and with St. Paul in his doctrine, and it seemed 
natural for him to compare Scripture with Scripture and bring 
out meanings not often emphasized. 

" He made a geodetic survey of his life along the loftiest 
summits, and found the trend of those heights pointing 
definitely in certain directions. This, as I suppose, is one of 



382 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

the most safe and searching tests any man can apply to his 
own career: In his highest moments, what is said to him? 
What do those highest moments mean if, when placed in line, 
they all trend in a given direction? Dr. Gordon believed, 
not that he had special illuminations, but that he was in the 
way of duty ; for year after year his efforts along the lines of 
an apostolic ministry were prospered ; year after year his de- 
votions, his study of the Bible, his watchful analysis of current 
providences, gave him more and more confidence that God 
was encouraging him. . . . 

" Read Dr. Gordon in full. Read all his many books ; 
several of them are religious classics. It is a remarkable fact 
that, in this city of Boston, three books have been written that 
are worthy to lie on the table by any dying couch, side by 
side with Thomas k Kempis's ' Imitatio Christi ' and Jeremy 
Taylor's ' Holy Living and Dying.' These three were among 
our brother's volumes, and entitled ' In Christ,' ' The Twofold 
Life,' and * The Ministry of the Spirit,' the last coming from 
the press within a few hours of our bereavement. They are 
fit to be placed among the religious classics approved after 
long experience by Christians of every name. I believe they 
will live as such, and in this opinion I am not singular. It is 
held by men of far better judgment than myself, who are, 
many of them, here to-day. I believe it will be indorsed by 
the churches as the years roll on. Mr. Spurgeon and a dozen 
other critics I could mention have spoken of Dr. Gordon's 
books in terms which one might think fulsome, if personal ac- 
quaintance with their value had not shown the merits of those 
writings so powerful, so quiet, so filled with the Spirit. I read 
Dr. Gordon's volumes from end to end. The Scotch said, 
when Dr. Pierson and Dr. Gordon made a tour as lecturers 
after the great World's Missionary Convention in London in 
1888, 'Dr. Pierson inspired us; Dr. Gordon fed us.' Several 
times the cover had been worn off and replaced on his copy 






TILL THE DAY DAWN 383 

of the Greek New Testament. Dr. Gordon was the superior 
of most of us in spiritual insight. He was born with wonder- 
ful natural capacities in the direction of religious thought, emo- 
tion, and intuition. He was a thinker, he was a philosopher, 
and he was a mystic also. He had a great head, a great heart. 
He was able to get a bucket down very deeply into the wells 
of spiritual truth. I advise you to notice what crystalline 
waters he brought up, and to drink often from those fountains. 
" Two facts concerning Judson Gordon I am very sure his- 
tory will remember : first, that he was polygonal ; next, that 
every side of him was biblical. He was distinguished as 
preacher, pastor, evangelist, reformer, editor. He was the 
scholar's assistant toward the narrow and strait way. One 
of the most difficult things he ever did, I think, was to bring 
the holy awe of self-consecration to the somewhat thoughtless, 
always rather impetuous, circles of students in many colleges. 
He was a traveler; he faced strange audiences abroad, and 
fed them ; he was in his family a priest. He was known here 
in the attics and cellars as one who could imitate the Saviour 
in going from house to house doing good. He built this 
church on the pattern shown to him by the Holy Spirit in 
Scripture and life. These are only a few sides of his work ; 
but every side was scriptural. I revere exceedingly this com- 
prehensiveness in his religious outlook and culture and activity. 
He was not one of those who tried to master so many things 
as not to be an authority on any one of them. In all these 
departments of his activity he was looked upon by many of 
us, I am sure, as a leader." 

" My brother, against the day of thy burying have I kept 
this alabaster flask, and I come now beforehand to anoint thy 
body for the burial. 

" There are some things that ought not to be spoken of a 
yet living man ; but our lips may perhaps be unsealed when 



384 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 

God has taken him. I dare not speak — and it would not be 
proper nor delicate— of what this loss is to me personally. He 
was a great man. I never knew a man who lived on the 
bosom of God as he did. I never expect to see his like ; I 
never knew his like ; he has no successor. When God made 
him, he broke the mould. As I look upon this life which I 
have studied intensely for years and from the inner circle of 
friendship, there seems to be in it a strangely rounded symme- 
try. He was so heavenly in character. Did you ever see 
such a countenance as his was? When I sat here on the 
platform at his late anniversary, and looked at him, I went 
away from the place with just one verse of Scripture promi- 
nent in my mind, which has remained so ever since: 'And 
all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his 
face as it had been the face of an angel. 1 He was a ripe fruit, 
and the Husbandman simply bent down and plucked it at its 
ripeness ; he wanted a closer taste of it at his own banquet 
board. You could not expect to keep him longer, for the light 
on his brow was the light of anticipated transfiguration. But 
then his lifework, like his character, was singularly complete. 
Just look at the twenty-five years of work in this church! 
Think of the manliness and the boldness of his testimony to 
the whole rounded gospel. Look at the way in which he ad- 
ministered this church, which by the grace of God he led by 
a gradual process into such illumination as to the mind of God 
and such elimination of worldly elements that it was a fitting 
place for the Holy Ghost to preside ; and the Holy Ghost did 
preside here as I venture to say he presides in, perhaps, no 
other one church in the United States. That church is itself 
a living epistle. . . . 

" There is something beautiful to me in God's taking him 
away right in his prime, in the fullness of his beauty ; for we 
remember men as they make their last impress upon us. We 
shall always remember Adoniram Judson Gordon as the full- 



TILL THE DAY DAWN 3*5 

grown man in his prime of intellect, in his prime of Christian 
achievement, in the midst of the glory of the work that has 
grown to this point and now never could decline under his 
hand, for his hand is no more upon it. Is not that better than 
for him to have grown old, to have decayed in intellectual 
power, to have declined in social influence, to have dimmed 
the majesty of his imperial scepter? 

" He will be remembered as the full-statured man, whose 
power was full-orbed and whose sunset was without a cloud. 
He is forever beyond the possibility of marring his own life- 
work even by imprudence or incaution, and no one else can 
impair its symmetry. When his character and career reached 
their nearest approximation to the ideal, God suddenly crys- 
tallized the vision into permanence, and so it will forever stand 
for men to contemplate and imitate.'* 

On a warm day in the following spring, when the frost had 
left the ground and the trees stood clothed in living green, 
the casket was taken from the vault and laid in its final rest- 
ing-place in Forest Hill Cemetery. It had been the first im- 
pulse of the dead man's friends to put him in the uplands of 
his old home, where his grave should face the solemn arc of 
snow-tipped mountains which circle half the horizon. "A 
man's birthplace may well be his burial-place," said Joseph 
Cook, when he heard of it, " but I think his battle-field may 
better be. For one, I wish we might have the privilege of 
often standing at the tomb of this warrior. I could hav'e 
wished that he might have remained with us here at the edge 
of the great deep." 

The suggestion was pressed by others. It was recalled how 
eagerly Gordon himself had sought out the graves of Eliot, 
of Brainerd, of Edwards, and how much inspiration their 
simple headstones had been to him. In the hope, therefore, 
that in days to come his memory might quicken those who 



3 86 



ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON 



should stand above his grave, he was buried hard by the 
city where his lifework was wrought out. Over him was 
placed a massive boulder with this inscription : 

PASTOR A. J. GORDON 

1836-1895 

"until he come" 

Not to him had it been given to be " caught up to meet 
the Lord in the air," as he had hoped and prayed. Rather 
will it be his to return with the Lord and with those tarrying 
within the veil, when the trump of the archangel shall en- 
swathe the whole earth. To this return, to " the glorious ap- 
pearing of the great God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ," 
his grave alone among the thousands in the great cemetery 
bears written and explicit testimony. 



























































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